And for an instant, I fantasized about wrapping my arms around her right then and there.

He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry because of the bruises he'd made on her arms or legs or her back. He would say that he hated what he'd done, but in the next breath tell her she'd deserved it. That if she'd been more careful, it wouldn't have happened. That if she'd been paying attention or hadn't been so stupid, he wouldn't have lost his temper.

All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story.

So that's the ghost you been running from.

Do you ever sit back and wonder what it all means? Whether this is it or if there's something greater out there? Or if you were meant for something better?

Staring at the stars was like staring backward in time, since some stars are so far away that their light takes millions of years just to reach us. That we see stars not as they look now, but as they were when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole concept just struck me as…amazing somehow.

A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1.