Real Courage Is Doing The

Every Book Has Got Its Challenges. You Run Into A Plot Point That You Can't Figure Out, Or A Scene That You Struggle To Write And Have To Write 50 Times.

And Indeed, I Am A Warmhearted And Thoroughly Domestic Man Who Gets Up And Makes Pancakes For His Children And Kisses Them On The Head When He Sends Them Off To Their Day.

He Breathed Once More, Holding The Air In His Chest, As If It Were Not Air But Something More--a Sweet Taste Of Freedom, Of All Cares Lifted, Everything Over And Done.

In Her Mind's Eye She Saw It, Saw It All At Last: The Rolling Armies And The Flames Of Battle; The Graves And Pits And Dying Cries Of A Hundred Million Souls; The Spreading Darkness, Like A Black Wing Stretching Over The Earth; The Last, Bitter Hours Of Cruelty And Sorrow, And The Terrible, Final Flights; Death's Great Dominion Over All, And, At The Last, Empty Cities, Becalmed By The Silence Of A Hundred Years. Already These Things Were Coming To Pass.

My Theory Of Characterization Is Basically This: Put Some Dirt On A Hero, And Put Some Sunshine On The Villain, One Brush Stroke Of Beauty On The Villain.