It took us most of the morning to put together the letter she sent to the Frontier Management Department, and I learned a lot about how to be frigidly polite and still leave somebody feeling like they'd been spanked.

Many, if not most, of the best and most lasting children’s books have multiple levels, some of which are not fully accessible to their most likely readers…at least, not on their first read-through at age eight or ten or fifteen.

I loved getting my M. B. A., and I really enjoyed being an accountant and financial analyst before I quit my day job twenty-five years ago to write full time. I just liked writing more…plus, I knew even then that as a full-time writer, I'd get plenty of chances to do business-type stuff, while as an accountant, I probably wouldn't get a lot of opportunities to write about dragons.

No proper princess would come out looking for dragons," Woraug objected. "Well I'm not a proper princess then!" Cimorene snapped. "I make cherries jubillee and I volunteer for dragons, and I conjugate Latin verbs-- or at least I would if anyone would let me. So there!

Then they gave me a loaf of bread and told me to walk through the forest and give some to anyone who asked. I did exactly what they told me, and the second beggar-woman was a fairy in disguise, but instead of saying that whenever I spoke, diamonds and roses would drop from my mouth, she said that since I was so kind, I would never have any problems with my teeth.” “Really? Did it work?” “Well, I haven’t had a toothache since I met her.” “I’d much rather have good teeth than have diamonds and roses drop out of my mouth whenever I said something

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down."

Sometimes, though, you have to do things for family, even if you'd rather not.