On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.

I've never taken a scalpel to a dead body.

Night fell clean and cold in Dublin, and wind moaned beyond my room as if a million pipes played the air.

Even when I am writing I usually take a break around lunchtime and go for a little walk to clear out my head.

But when I was a little kid, I was always writing stories and illustrating little books that I would create.