Mostly what ends up inspiring me and affecting my work are books by authors that I love.

Jealousy is a potent emotion, of course, and Facebook, texting, email, fan Web pages... In theory, being someone like George Clooney's or Halle Berry's paramour - woo hoo - how great would that be? But wait a minute... er, no, probably kind of a nightmare.

Sometimes I do work on a longer manuscript in tandem with one or two shorter pieces - whether it's a short story or an essay (though I don't write many of the latter).

Thirty years ago, the Pandora's box of the Internet wasn't yet a fact of life, and celebrities inhabited a more remote, hard-to-reach plane.

I keep a couple of notebooks too into which I record ideas for story titles or characters or situations, and these notes help me quite a bit when I'm feeling at loose ends and not sure of what to work on next.

The effects of fame on the not-famous people who are close to a celebrity - this is definitely a topic that continues to interest me.

I don't know if make a conscious effort to vary the characters and subjects that I write about, but I do find myself keeping track of ideas that come along, as probably most writers do, and whatever seems most interesting to me when I flip through my notes before I begin a new story is usually what I will try to write about next.