On the other hand, I'm a La-Z-Girl with a short attention span, and wouldn't do it if it wasn't entertaining me with its endless variety, so I write mostly fantasy: it's the best field ever for the play of the imagination. The challenge I set myself is to write fantasy that is intelligent, meaningful, beautifully crafted, and still – in spite of it? because of it? – full of excitement and wonder and spine-tingling, gut-wrenching fun.

The unnerving thing is that, as weird as I try to make my fiction, it's never as weird as the real world. Take the publishing industry, for example. (Nice segue, yes?) Actually, the weirdest part of my publishing experience might well be that I got published at all, because my take on "weird" is pretty literary, and my take on "literary" is way too weird. Believe me, I put in my years of amassing rejection letters, along with a few quiet nods of approbation for the occasional small-market story. However, my collection In the Palace of Repose was snapped up by Prime Books and received all kinds of positive attention, including 2 World Fantasy Award nominations and the 2006 Sunburst Award. Prime also published my first novel, The Burning Girl, but it was the collection that won me the attention of Sally Harding of the Cooke Agency. Sally gets the credit for bringing my second novel, The Engine's Child, to the attention of Jim and Liz at Del Rey, who will be putting it on bookstore shelves on November 25, 2008.

As for the real world: I live in Victoria, BC, which is a small city on a big island off Canada's Pacific coast. I have a cat, of course; and a lot of books, of course; and am madly saving up to buy a kayak -- of course.

NEW! Locus did an interview with me at World Fantasy in 2006, and that back issue is available at a special price if anyone's anxious to know more about little ol' me. Here's the link, and here's a glimpse of the interview itself: