I love seeing the light go on in aspiring writers' eyes when you point out ways to improve their prose or their story - when they get it.

Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning.

Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn up the volume and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound as if they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off.

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character.

Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor? Kolabati looked into his eyes. "He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent.

True freedom requires taking responsibility for your own life. That frightens the hell out of too many people. They prefer to have Big Brother holding a safety net for them, and they'll sell their own birthright and their children's as well to keep it.

I survived a number of garage bands during my teens and early twenties, both as drummer and guitarist. It's nigh impossible for me to listen to music without parsing it.