Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

Perhaps the thing that makes humans truly unique on Earth is that we are never satisfied with our situation; maybe that is what's taken us so far.

Humans are upsetting a fragile balance that their own human ancestors established.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.

How time slips past, masked in the rhythm of the days!