1. Loneliness. The desire to express how the world looks when one is middle-aged and unwanted. (My first book is about a 47-year old bachelor.)

2. The desire to communicate with (unmarried) people who would understand the emotions my characters experience, their hopes and disappointments, their motivations. The desire to explain ourselves to people who don’t understand (married folks) what the world looks like to the rest of us.

3. After that, it’s a story about facing up to who you really are versus what you believe yourself to be, and the idea that each person’s experience is unique — and different from that of the person who shares it with him.