What Gives Birth to a Novel?
I didn't grow up yearning to be an author. I tried my hand at a few things; dish pigging, brick cleaning, physiotherapy, commodities trading...then I started writing one day. I didn't have any real plan. I just felt compelled to fill a blank page. That compulsion was related to one very specific moment, a dawn bus ride through southern Mexico years earlier. I remember it so clearly, the act of writing those first scribbles, sitting awkwardly at my laptop, sweating bullets in
