After two years of sending out query letters and failing to get an agent, I made friends with an author, who was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. That got my foot in the door.

The boy grows upward, but the girl grows up.

I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.

There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.

But it isn’t a rough draft either. The one I turned in several months ago was rough. There were some bad plot holes, some logical inconsistencies, pacing problems, and not nearly enough lesbian unicorns.

But sometimes the best help a person can find is helping someone else.

She reached up and lay her hand on my cheek. "You have the sweetest face," she said, looking at me dreamily. "It's like the perfect kitchen." I fought not to smile. This was the delirium. She'd fade in and out of it before the profound exhaustion dragged her down into unconsciousness. If you see someone spouting nonsense to themselves in an alleyway in Tarbean, odds are they're not actually crazy, just a sweet-eater deranged by too much denner. "A kitchen?" "Yes," she said. "Everything matches and the sugar bowl is right where it should be.