Kate Arden is an awesome name. I want to name a character Kate Arden now.

In a lot of older books - though in newer ones too, sometimes - the hero or heroine is a paragon of virtue and totally boring, and the secondary characters light up the page. I always wonder, are the authors aware that they misfired? But maybe they don't see it that way.

I love reading old books. It has some of the same pleasures of reading a fantasy, because the world is so alien - perhaps even more so in books that aren't classics, because they're more of their time.