How do you generate ideas for both plot and characters? I’m one of the hundreds who is swooning and getting her breath caught at the “what’s this, Granger?” moment and I’d love to know how you came up with the idea for this in particular + how you usually come up with other wonderful moments that constitute the glorious Lionheart saga.

Oh, gosh, you're lovely. When writing is good — and this is a big conditional, because sometimes writing is like riding a horse and sometimes it's like wrestling an octopus, and you can rarely predict which — I don't necessarily think about the Process. It's sinking into the world and going, "Okay, action." There's an outline lurking behind it, and latently I'm considering some miscellaneous higher-order ideas about theme and structure, but I'm not writing the book in order to talk about those themes; the themes are in the book because I'm writing it and I'm interested in them. I can't very well help it, they're gonna end up in there no matter what. I don't have to worry about the architecture when I'm doing the upholstery, if that makes sense.

Discovering the more specific character beats and exchanges like the one in Chapter 64 are one of the ineluctable joys of creation. Sometimes, I think of a line while I'm walking down the street, jot it down in my Notes app, and carefully, meticulously develop a context where I can deploy it. Other times, I'm standing there in the scene and a guy does a thing, and I'm as startled as anyone.