Back in my days as a children's book editor, my superiors caught on to the fact that teenagers were using the Internet to gossip about each other, and thought it might be nifty to develop a series of books about an anonymous high-school blogger who gossips about her classmates. The concept was passed on to me.

'Gossip Girl' came out in rapid succession over two years, so the endings always had to be suspenseful so that you couldn't wait for the next one.

I'm just a crazy person. I mean, I really didn't have any trouble coming up with weird ways for people to die. I think I'm just very twisted!

She was doing that thing some people do when they act nice and chipper and interested, while just below the surface they’re thinking really mean thoughts, and you can never call them on it because they’d just accuse you of being paranoid.

When I meet other parents and they're more 'mumsy' than I am - you know, I don't want to be 'mumsy,' but I'm like, 'Were you always like that or... what happened?

My biggest fear in writing 'Gossip Girl' was that the characters would sound like stereotypical rich, air-headed heiresses. These were my friends. They were smart and multifaceted. They had interests and passions. They wanted to become lawyers and doctors and writers and filmmakers.

I remember, in my senior year, one of my teachers taking me aside and saying: 'You look really tired.' This was when I was being a bad kid and she knew that something was wrong.