L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.

I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him.

A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth.

Writers are magpies, and we collect details about people and we use them for fictional characters.

E-readers are changing the way we read, and the author is now required to get out there and be a kind of showman, an unlikely role for introspective people used to working in their pajamas!

There have been years where I've had to take a real job and I wrote during slow times and lunches. I think never forgetting how lucky I am to be able to do something I love has really fueled me.

I just love that feeling of being in another world, of creating characters and watching where they go.