And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don't know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.

If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

Honestly, I believe that the mother-daughter relationship is magical, complex, potentially dangerous, profoundly powerful, and deeply transformative. To put it simply, all of us have this relationship, and in a very real way, "none of us comes out alive." We are all formed first as daughters and then tested as mothers. There's nothing like motherhood to make us reassess how we were as daughters.

To lose love is a terrible thing. But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you'll ever love anyone that deeply again?

Honestly, when you start talking about genres, you're talking as much about the business side of writing as anything else. Certainly there are elements of reader expectation that play into various genres, and those are important, but it also becomes about packaging, placement, audience....In the end, I'm not a fan of labels. I think the best fiction blurs the boundaries between genres, stretches and breaks them.

Hands down, the hardest part for me is coming up with an idea. I spend about 14 months writing a book, and that's a lot of hours spent thinking about a single project. I simply have to love the idea. I'll go through dozens of workable ideas until I find the one that lights my fire.

And maybe that was how it was supposed to be...Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps,was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly.