It’s easy now, three and a half years later, for me to romanticize how I came up with Diamonds in Auschwitz. There were a lot of things that I didn’t realize until I started digging into the research, and then, even later, as I was writing. The problem with romanticizing the strike of lightning that was Diamonds in Auschwitz is that it paralyzed me to start my next work in progress. The idea for the book I just started writing has come slowly, building over two years. I was afraid to write it for a long time. I had to just get started and make this rain shower a storm of words.