From everywhere and anywhere, but always from somewhere deep inside me. I have to feel my characters inside before I can turn them out. They’re like a tiny presence at first, almost like watching someone walk down from a very large hill–you see the dot over the horizon, then they begin to descend, getting bigger by the minute until suddenly they are on top of you, demanding that you move out of the way. Most often, there is a real memory or experience behind the kernel of the idea, even though that reality gets changed along the way. It can be the recollection of something a real person once did, or said. For each book, it’s been different, but strong nonetheless–the memory, I mean.