What I wanted to do was to earn enough money to pay for my mother's house. When my mother passed away, I wanted to buy it from the rest of my family and keep the house in the family. That was the only reason I even attempted writing for money.

I have always loved to read, and now that I have penned 10 novels and a few magazine articles, I have fallen seriously in love with writing stories and seeing them go out into the world. It's magical, you know?

And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere!

What I wanted to do was to earn enough money to pay for my mother's house. When my mother passed away, I wanted to buy it from the rest of my family and keep the house in the family. That was the only reason I even attempted writing for money.

Here's my definition of a great beach read - a fabulous story that sucks me in like a black hole and when it's over, it jettisons my bones across the galaxy with a hair on fire mission to convince everyone I know that they must read that book or they will die.

Anyway, stories bring us together to find common ground, to find our way through life together, or just to entertain us, and I am just thrilled to be a part of that process.

A new year was a chance to start over. Maybe even, just maybe, there would be a peace on earth for one entire day.