Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.

I left my job in the fall, and now I can set my life up around writing instead of squeezing writing into my day it's amazing to have that time, and I feel very lucky.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California, if I hadn't been exposed to its very particular blend of beauty and disaster, of danger and denial.

End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed, yet where there's so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have, and take for granted: hot showers, enough food, friends, routines.

Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.

I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.