I suppose it's easier for most writers to create and vivify characters of their own gender.

As New York careens toward the modernity of the twentieth century when Gibson girls were transforming themselves into working women, Clara Driscoll enters the male field of stained glass artistry and builds a lively, multi-national, multi-class women's department within Tiffany Studios.

Two of my grandfathers had been artists, lifelong oil painters, so I was exposed to art very young. I've always been interested in it, although I never pursued it as a career or even as an avocation.

I absorbed as many Impressionist paintings as I could, in Parisian museums and in many museums in the United States and in books, looking for clues to architecture, clothing, settings.

I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let's face it, friends make life a lot more fun.

Although the Nasser revolution of 1952 was secular, the culture remained deeply religious - but it was a faith of moderation and tolerance. Women made up nearly half my class at university, and my senior academic adviser there was a woman. In Alexandria, my friends were Christians and Muslims.

I'm calling my book series the 'with God series.' And this next 'with God' book is Friendship with God, which comes out in November. This books challenges us to bring about the end of 'better' on this planet.

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures?