My black cat was named Blackie.

I do Q&As, not readings.

Melrose, smiling brightly at the butcher.

They’re an idea of home, I think. Words are. It really is like opening a door, isn’t it, to open a book. If that’s not too sentimental to say. Books, words, stories are a kind of solace.

Macalvie, that was an incredibly lachrymose question.

Old willows trailed veils of wet leaves across his path. Moss crawled up the headstones. The place was otherwise deserted.

If a cone had dropped on velvet needles, if a star had lain a silver track across the sky, if the dead had turned in their graves – I swear, I would have heard it, that’s how silent it all was.

He suspected, given her editorial experience, that she was in her fifties, but she had been coiffed, massaged, starved, and sunlamped down to forty.

Perhaps he was fit for the life of a hermit. Give up all of his worldly possessions and go live in a hut on a shelf of rock and watch the sunrise every morning. Up before the sun! What a dreadful idea; he shuddered.

And so it continued all day, wynde after wynde, From a room beyond came the whistle of a teakettle. Now, you really must join me. I’ve some marvelous Darjeeling, and some delicious petit fours a friend of mine gave me for Christmas.