I suppose, the natural outgrowth about writing about two friends, it becomes about their friendship, and the complexities of it, and the way personality plays off each other, and what they each like to do, separately and together.

It's very cool to be short, very cool. When I was in eighth grade, and the height I am now, I would just look at the cute little short girls and think, 'If only, if only.

I like to write in all different genres. I just like a new challenge.

So we [with Kate DiCamillo] would act them out, we would toss ideas back and forth, we would laugh, we would argue. Sometimes it went really well, sometimes it was such a pain in the ass. Our other rule was that we wouldn't work on it at all when we weren't in the other's presence. It was really hard not to do that. We'd start going on email back and forth, 'What do you think about this, what do you think about that?' But, no, no, no, it had to be live. So we forced ourselves not to look at it except during those two-hour stretches when we were actually with each other.

Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.

We certainly have a lot of ideas, and we both love what Tony [Fucile] did with the book [Bink & Gollie]. If we could all pull it off, I think all three of us would like to do another.

All it takes is a single moment.