Somehow you drift along on the river, and one day you wake up and you’re someplace you don’t want to be, with someone you realize you don’t know.

People are so obsessed with that these days. As long as you're healthy, what difference do a few pounds make? Crazy diets. Thirteen-year-old girls on magazine covers who wind up in hospitals because they're so anorexic. Real women don't look like that. And who wants them to? No one wants a woman who looks sick or like she;s been from a refugee camp.

You don’t know how lucky you are, my dear. Don’t waste it with regrets of the places and people you have lost. You have a lifetime to fill, so many good times and good years and great people ahead of you. You must rush to meet it.

Each book takes anywhere from two to three years to complete, from concept to outline to final edits. I work on as many as five at a time.

Never lend your car keys to someone you gave birth to.

I write about the things that happen to us all. The things that are tough, the things that matter, from a loved one fighting an illness, to losing a job, being betrayed by somebody you trust, all parts of the human condition. No one is exempt from those things.

The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent.