Happily, fantastic fiction is slowly gaining in status.

Your first thought is often the best one. You know, the one that felt too weird or silly or stupid. Trust your imagination - it knows what it's doing.

I don't consider genre while writing.

My early stories revolved around reality and faith. I wrote a series of stories about the darker aspects of Christian myth: a woman who hides in the attic and watches the Apocalypse, a cult whose members preserve themselves in huge formalin tubs waiting for the Second Coming, and so on.

All my stories and worlds spring from the basic principle of being a slave to the premise, to follow the consequences wherever they may lead without taking any easy or comfortable ways out.

Time is built entirely on consensus: humans decide that they have linear time, so they do.

I'm not comfortable with categorizing my own work, but I don't mind if others talk about it in relation to genre as long as they don't try to hold it up to some genre standard.

I don't go out of my way to write Weird Fiction, or in any other genre. Some of my stuff easily slips into the Weird slot.

If you want the reader to accept the premise as a given, then being specific is vital. This is what I'm after I want the reader to accept the setting and the mindset of the characters, so we can get on with the story.

What does seem to be a constant is that I write more emotional stories the older I get. I think a lot of that has to do with growing up in a patriarchal structure where unemotional intellect (male) is taken more seriously than delving into emotions (female), and gradually freeing myself from those expectations.

To the goats, all people are equal, except for those who have treats.

What I do with the story itself varies of course, but what I want to do is to present the world so that the reader can access it without tripping over the details.

I'm just being honest about the fact that a second language won't resonate with you like the first does.