[ Adult novels] was the world of grownups. There was nothing about teenagers.

I wasn't interested in the kinds of books that I thought I should be reading.

I was sick all the time, one exotic illness after another, which lasted throughout my twenties. My worst decade. But from the day the first book was accepted, I never got sick again. Writing changed my life.

I've heard that some authors do dream their books and I would love that if it happened to me, but so far it hasn't. Sometimes I'll get a good idea during the night and if I don't write it down, I won't remember it the next morning.

Ideas come from everywhere - they come from what you see and hear and imagine.

I'm an e-mail junkie though I'm trying to read my in-box only twice a day and to answer all at once.

I never thought about writing. I was married young, I was still in college, as we did then, and I had two babies before I was 25, and I loved them, and I loved taking care of them, but I was a little bit cuckoo, staying at home and not having a creative outlet.