Places I've lived have supplied the landscapes for my fictions, such as the small towns of Texas, or the warrens of our Tokyo neighborhood, or the beaches of Hawaii, or the wilds of Southern California, or the middle west of Missouri, or the exotic islands in Micronesia, or the streets and alleys of San Francisco, or rural Louisiana. Writing became a daily habit during my late teens and early twenties. I honed my skills with letters to my family and friends (snail mail in those days), and a creative writing degree in college. Since childhood I have been an avid reader. On a trip to the library in the 1990s, I wandered the stacks, unable to chose, when I realized what I wanted to read was the book I was writing.