I have about as much knowledge about how my writing came to be as I do about how I came to be. Vague ideas of gleams in eyes, a set of circumstances, happenstance and coincidences that seem ridiculously contrived when you look back upon them—and are nearly impossible to see when you're caught up in them—lead to me being born in Fort Lauderdale, getting an undergraduate degree from Harvard, somehow winding up in Texas and eventually writing a sci-fi/fantasy/crime fiction novel. I try to write what I know, and I once read that that saying is meant not to limit writers only to what they have knowledge of, but to encourage them to write what they've directly experienced. I wouldn't say any character in my novel *is* me, but when there's pain or joy or fear or anger in their eyes (any of them: heroes, cads, dames, and goofs alike), those are my eyes, too. (Photo credit: The wonderful Mr. Jaladhi Pujara, my friend and co-worker.)