Usually, the creating of the book happens while I'm writing the book. I start with Chapter One, with a few ideas and a handful of characters, and the book grows from there.

I always had this put-together family, and I always identified as the outsider. And that's a position where I feel most comfortable, and yet I feel an incredible longing to belong. That is really a strong feeling from my childhood - a desire to be part of a group.

I definitely feel that my brain works differently, and words come out differently, if I have a pencil in my hand, rather than if I have a keyboard.

I don't like stories where I'm being given pages and pages of detail.

I have three stepfamilies as well as my family of origin. I've had to adjust to them and also go back and forth among them. I became an observer of human nature because when you are in those situations you have to be.

There are very few things I would love to do other than a life of writing, and I think being a singer-songwriter and being an anthropologist are the two other things I can imagine doing.

Anthropology is separated from mass reading, and that is something that bothered Margaret Mead. She always said that she wrote everything for her grandmother, in a way that her grandmother could understand what she was saying.