Q: Why do mirrors appear so often in your work?
I didn’t notice that myself, so whatever it is, it must dwell below the threshold of reason. Ask yourself: what does a mirror do? It transforms the three-dimensional image of a subject into a flat representation that looks like it, but lacks substance and depth. A mirror is to an object like a memoir is to a person’s real life: no matter how much detail is rendered in it, it can never capture the essence of what being that person was truly like.
Q: What is the difference between memory and imagination?
I don’t think there is a fundamental difference.
The images and concepts they create in your mind are just as real whether they’re a replica of a place or situation you encountered, or a manufactured reality you constructed.
The power of their emotional content is the same, and they both have the ability to awaken your intuition and spur you to action.
This lack of distinction is precisely what enables visualization, empowering you to craft for yourself a future that is both unfamiliar to you and highly desirable.
It is also what makes ancient and abstruse spiritual practices understandable: altered states of consciousness, dream incubation, vision quests.
Q: If a reader could walk into one of your stories, where would you send them?
I would send them to Generations, the happy, carefree world where the children of Terra Two grew up. Nothing is impossible in that world.
It is a place without dangers where advanced technological breakthroughs made the mere intention of creating something enough to bring it to life.
Q: Why are doorways, thresholds, and hidden rooms recurring motifs in your writing?
There is a lot more to this life than we can see, or even know exists.
I was raised on fairytales and later developed an interest in transcendental concepts.
These two ends of the spectrum share a similar intuition: that whatever that is that lays beyond our perception or understanding is accessible through some hidden, mystical knowledge.
The quest for that hidden knowledge has haunted enlightened people throughout history.
Q: Is nostalgia a place, an emotion, or a form of time travel?
I think it’s all three: nostalgia transports you back in time to the person you used to be back then, and to places that no longer exist. For a brief time you become that old you again, in a place lost to the past.
