SOME COMMON QUESTIONS ... AND THE ANSWERS

Q: What do you read for fun?
A: Every week I eagerly await the arrival of Science and Nature, two journals that cover a wide range of subjects. I can hardly wait to curl up in bed with those things. I rarely read fiction, mainly because I don't know what to read, and I'm too finicky to pick up random novels in the bookstore. My book-aholic Dad used to leave bags of good books on my doorstep, but since I lost him I'm rudderless and readingless. Some of my all-time faves, however, are Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and Sam Shepard's early plays.

Q: How do you do your research?
A: Obviously, I sometimes travel to gather information directly from a person or place. Those are the glamorous moments. Most of the time, though, I'm flogging the Internet for journal articles. Over the years, I've become semi-fluent in the language of scientific research, but it still gives me a thrill when I can plow into an article titled "Rapid turnover of hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi determined by AMS microanalysis of 14-C," and maintain traction right through a sentence like this: "However, 13-C studies have shown that host-plant photosynthate enters mycorrhizal hyphae within a few hours of fixation and that within 24 hours most of this C has been respired by the ERM." It's not glamorous, but I enjoy translating this stuff into normal English so that people can see how cool the world really is.

Q: How can you work at home?
A: Discipline. In college I worked for a newspaper, covering suburban meetings and politics. I had to send my stories in the night they happened. As my deadline approached, I'd sit down and write - in a hallway, in my car, or in the meeting itself. It was great practice. It was especially helpful when I began working for Discovery.com and had to turn in a daily story from the End of the Earth, where it might be 110 degrees and blowing sand and everyone else was prancing around the campfire and having a grand old time.

I do, however, have some preferences... I like to work by a window so I can check on the planet in between paragraphs. And I dearly love to have country music in the background: It's predictable, and it features the human voice. Normally, the rotation might include Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Hal Ketchum, Dolly, and a local guy named Mark Farrington. But the CD player's broken at the moment, so I'm stuck with the radio.

Q: Do you do your research first, then the writing?
A: I mix it up. I tend to forget all about the "rapid turnover of hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi" if I read it too far in advance of when I write about it. So I'm learning to skim the research, to defer the gratification of devouring every word, until I'm actually ready to use it. I'm so easily distracted by marvelous stuff like the North Atlantic Oscillation, or the metabolism in hibernating ground squirrels, that I often do much more research than I should, given that the human life span is finite.

Q: How do you decide what goes in the book?
A: There are a couple of tests that information must pass. First, is it going to be interesting to anyone besides me? I struggle with this, because I personally find the most arcane minutia to absolutely riveting, and I have a hard time remembering that this is not normal - and that other people, too, have to confront the finite aspect of the human life span. The second test is the real heart-breaker: Sometimes even a jewel of knowledge gets the axe just because it can't fit gracefully into the narrative. That just kills me: I've found a perfectly gorgeous lump of wisdom, and it's getting decapitated for the teensy, weensy offense of not playing well with others. Argh!

Q: What's your favorite place you've traveled?
A: There are different categories. For pure beauty, Iceland. The landscape is big, bold, and bizarre, and the midnight sun in summer makes everything surreal. For utter foreignness, it's hard to beat Madagascar. Everything you look at is shocking - every plant and animal is strange, and the red land itself is weird. Walking through cattle pasture, I once stumbled on fossil corals the size of dinner plates. Then for the culture, I love Mongolia. Although the culture is in grave danger, the connection of the people and the land is still obvious - you can see how people built their lives in response to the huge, harsh land they live upon. And despite the unforgiving land, most Mongolians I met seemed always poised on the brink of laughter.