I don't want to make myself sound that spontaneous, because I'm not.

I had a general outline of subjects. The way I start my days is my husband brings me a thermos of coffee up to the bedroom.

I know I'm still young and there's a lot of time for things to happen, but sometimes I think there is something about me that's wrong, that I'm not the kind of person anyone can fall in love with, and that I'll always just be alone.

Often they do go back and forth the whole way, and I don't know until the very end what the last line of the book is going to be. That was true here - the very last line of the book was the last thing that happened.

I don't feel like it's something I invented myself, rather something I absorbed and continue to do.

In some ways I'm very structured.

I remember when I was working on All Alone in the Universe, and Robin Roy was my editor. When I first sent it to her, she said kids this age don't want pictures in their books.