None of us truly knows what we'll do when the circumstances become so overwhelming and complex that we can't even tell right from wrong.

Sisters are made by living everyday with each other and wearing each other down until the rough spots are smooth. They're made by sharing secrets you'd never tell mom, and out of doing things for each other just because you feel like it, not because you have to. I guess you could say sisters are 'grown,' not manufactured, in a very special place called a family.

I think that hurting gives us a way to measure being happy. How can you know one without knowing the other.

Pain and suffering are the soil of strength and courage.

Well, in Angel of Hope, Amber ends up going in her sister's stead. The focus of that book and the next one coming out, Angel of Love, is how she finds her way out of her sister's shadow and into herself. That's really what those two novels are based on.

I wanted to show what it's really like for 98 percent of the world's population [in the third world]. Plus, I also see there are an awful lot of young people out there doing good things, and I wanted to give them a platform.

In truth, I don't want to be there. I don't want to see the light go out of my brother's eyes.