I'm a big girl, Finn.

As a young boy, I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely, but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer, where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be.

Lightning crashed on the horizon. A breeze swirled around the Cast Members. The air tasted dusty, almost bitter, with electrical charge.

Walt loved technology. He didn't understand it half the time, but the beauty of good technology was that he didn't have to understand it. Just use it.

Being a fiction writer is really like being an actor, because if you're going to write convincingly it has to sound right and play right. The only way that works is to emotionally and technically act out and see the scene you're in. There's no better job in the world, because when I sit down at that computer I'm the world's best forensics expert, if that's what I'm writing about that day. Or I'm some crazed psycho running down a dark alley. Or I'm a gorgeous woman looking to find a man that night. Whatever! But I'm all of those things, every day. How can you beat that?

I'm still only half the writer I hope I will be.