Here are their invigorating questions, and my answers.

* What came first when you began writing Seize the Storm? The frightening encounter on the ocean? A particular character? Or something else?

One evening I was swimming off the west shore of Maui, and I came upon a sailing vessel at anchor, a sleepy, other-worldly presence. She might have been there quite some time—there was sea-verdure growing on the anchor cable. And as I swam closer, entering her shadow, it struck me how immensely sinister such a vessel could be—how much mystery could be encountered and intriguing discovery could be made on such a craft. She was too quiet, and struck me as supernaturally abandoned. I think my sense of the derelict, ghostly ship on the high seas began with that encounter.

* You published another adventure that takes place on the water, Peril on the Sea, in 2008. What drew you back so soon to a nautical setting?

So many of my novels take place on the sea—for example, Nightsong, my story of Orpheus and Eurydice, features a voyage, and sea travel is an important component of my Crusader trilogy as well. Even Saint Peter's Wolf has an encounter with a shark. In a larger sense, I think that supposedly normal life, with buildings and streets, is a kind of sea—and not simply metaphorically. The land does have waves—I have been awakened many times by an earthquake.

* In Seize the Storm it seems to me that the young people are far less childish than the grownups, much more capable and in charge when the going gets tough. Are you just catering to your YA audience or does this have something to do with your feelings in general about the capabilities of kids?

There is no clear, individual protagonist to this novel. The characters seemed to ask me to give them equal treatment, and each voice edges out the others as the story gets tighter and tighter. Even characters like Laser and the shark may not get as much space on the page as others, but they surely make up for it in narrative impact. As far as whether the younger characters are more capable than the older characters—I know my characters will feel betrayed if I gossip about them in public. I think everyone gets a fair shake in my book.

* The youngest character, Shako, is a stone-cold teenage killer who has no hesitation about pulling the trigger on his very fancy weapon. Yet I find him a character who is oddly sympathetic. Those who cross him are doomed, but he seems doomed as well. Can you talk about him, where he came from, what your feelings about him are?

I feel that is is a shame that Shako did not fall into the hands of a kind, wise man instead of an individual who is, at heart, a modern pirate. In the presence of a good man, with compassion and an honest profession, Shako might have become a builder and constructor, or a hunter and explorer, instead of a killer. Many young men are heavily influenced and misguided by leadership with a swagger. I feel a great attachment for Shako, and while I fear for his future, I wish him all the best.

* Are you a sailor yourself? A beachcomber? Agoraphobic?

I grew up around do-it-yourself shipbuilding--someone always had a half built wooden vessel in the driveway. I learned to swim in the ocean at Newport Beach, California, and throughout my life I have lived near salt water. I have been aboard many kinds of vessels, including the replica Golden Hinde, Francis Drake's ship, when I was writing Ship of Fire. But a character like Captain Fletcher of Peril on the Sea would find me to be an enthusiastic but inept sailor, and quite correctly assign me to some duty that would not put the ship in absolute danger.

Just as importantly, I grew up around airplanes, pilots and people who built and rebuilt their own aircraft, and took them into the sky—and sometimes I went along along for the thrill.

* Would you agree that one of the games you play with the reader in Seize the Storm is to set up a situation that brings in as many clichés of nautical fiction as possible—treasure, stormy weather, an abandoned vessel—and then you seek to resolve them in utterly unexpected ways?

I don't play games in my writing. I live through my characters, and feel the events of the novel as they happen. During a windy, water-lashed scene I feel cold, and when my characters feel unsettled by greed, I am right there with them. Even though a novel like Seize the Storm took years to fully realize, each time I entered the story I felt that I was in the middle of the Pacific, with no escape.

One of the characteristics of the ocean is that it is a wide, deep, lively, often deadly cliché. When you get trapped in a riptide, or encounter a shark while swimming, you realize that you are in one of those famous situations you have heard about, and it does nothing to diminish the shock.

* You’ve written many books. Is your writing process always the same for each novel, or does it vary from book to book?

Writing is an adventure for me, and a very intense adventure at that. I forget my own life, and enter into another sort of being, whether it is the previously undiscovered voice of a poem, or an entire set of contradictory, potentially dangerous individuals, as with Seize the Storm. As I worked on the scenes after the storm has passed, for example, I felt the void open all round my characters, and around me. They were safe from the storm, but only to be given over to another kind of trauma. Even writing about it now I am there on the high seas. I can see it and taste it. Writing is like being alive many, many times over.