In August 2008, I moved with the man who would become my husband from Boston to a cabin in rural North Carolina.

Children exist in the worlds that adults create for them, both locally and globally, and their options are, by virtue of age, often painfully limited.

Children tell themselves stories, engage in self-delusion and fantasy, but those narratives are more evolving than calcified - and with that malleability comes both freedom and danger.

In the world of the American creative writing workshop, I've encountered teachers who are tempted to place, or have actually placed, a moratorium on child narrators. Students love to write them, but children come laden with complications.

When I was in grad school, my husband and I used to house sit for a couple in Harvard Square, so we have these amazing memories of great Cambridge summers.

I love Javier Marias; I love his novel 'Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me.'

I think, in a lot of ways, if you really strip down some of the most compelling novels, in a lot of ways, they're detective stories.

I love noir, quite obviously.

When I first left Florida for Boston, I was so eager to shed my Floridian identity, perhaps some of my earlier surreal gestures felt hollow and unconvincing because they were not rising from the particular brand of the uncanny I knew best.

Florida is a most unusual place. It can feel at once stifling and like anything is possible there.