When all choice is taken from you, life becomes a game of survival.

You believe this is a game, and you may be right. But if you think you can play it better than me, think again.

With you, I am Eve. And you are my beautiful Adam. Let's run away, find our garden, live there together, happy. Naked.

I never went to Albuquerque expecting to find love. I thought it had found me there, followed me home. I never came home expecting to lose love in the space of one brief telephone call. Is it always so short-lived?

I have a really good idea of who my readers are and always write with a sensitivity to my audience. I use the F word when necessary, but there are words I won't use, mainly because I don't like them. I don't write about body parts when I write about sex. It's not about the physiological, it's more important for teens to read about the emotional aspects. I do think there are times when self-censorship is important.

Not exactly. I see a girl who wants to present someone special to the world. Someone beautiful. The pinnacle of beauty. But she has lost her hold on reality. Real beauty isn’t thin. It isn’t size two, unless you happen to be four foot ten. What the world sees when they look at you is someone who believes self-worth is all about how she looks, and that very often means that what she’s missing is love. Not someone else’s love. But love and respect for herself.

In my books my characters experience things as they are. My books allow youth an honest look at important issues affecting them. As adults we want to believe things like sex abuse or drug use are not happening anymore, or happening less and less, but that's not the case and we need to acknowledge that. We can't make life prettier for youth, but we can arm them.