In the psychological thriller The Plague, Kevin Chong puts his spin on an Albert Camus classic, except Chong's version is set in a disease-ridden Vancouver. When rats start dying and people's lymph nodes begin to swell, Dr. Bernard Rieux struggles to fight the treatment-resistant epidemic. As the city is under quarantine, The Plague explores the psychological effects of isolation and the meaning in suffering.

Below, Chong takes the CBC Books Magic 8 Q&A and answers eight questions from eight fellow authors.

Isn't admiring (and noting) craft one part of the pleasure of reading for a writer? I have two jobs teaching writing, and turning to finished books and reading for fun is what I look forward to at the end of the day. On the other hand, it might feel more like work if I were to take those pleasure reads and re-read them again for tips.

Andreas Schroeder: author of 25 books, motorcyclist, German-speaker and home builder.

Sometimes it has started with a situation. Other times it's financial exigency. My new novel came about because my wife was moving books around the house and there was a copy of Albert Camus's The Plague lying around. The idea for my re-take came to me within days.

Here's something else: I know that I will finish a work of nonfiction when I start it. With fiction, there has been more anxiety. There are many false starts and uncompleted manuscripts on my hard drive. Lots of times an idea fizzles within a page. So in one sense, a work of fiction begins when I know I can finish it.

You have a first impression of your characters, just as you do someone you'd meet. But as you put your character through their paces, you learn new things about them. Sometimes you learn things that contradict what you already know. In that case, you rewrite — or you rethink your character as a sociopath.

So many hesitations. I try to make them very specific people, whose traits obscure any of those demographic markers. But then I need to think whether those traits don't feed into any unconscious biases.

I used to have musical tastes. Now I listen to the Annie soundtrack because it's my toddler-aged daughter's jam.

I dread the anonymous student reviews that I must read after a university course I teach is completed. Most of the comments are kind, and many of the criticisms can be constructive, but there are some blunt comments that get seared in my memory for weeks.

I don't mean to be a jerk, but I don't want to write like anyone else. When I was younger, yes, definitely. I often wish I wrote better, told better stories, but not in the manner of any other writer.