Sometimes I am so dry that people don't know I'm kidding and think I'm being serious. I enjoy this because their reactions are often funny.

First and foremost I am a commercial writer, and I hope to entertain people. But having said that, I'm in love with the relationship between humans and dogs, and the more I learned about what our military working dogs are doing, I wanted to at least share with people what an important role these animals have in all our lives.

I began to encounter real-life stories of dogs protecting their wounded or dying or dead handler... or dogs refusing to leave the bodies of the people they were bonded to, sitting in cemeteries for days or sometimes weeks. You find these stories endlessly.

Everyone knows dogs. Most people love dogs. I think most American families probably have a dog, but I don't think people really realize or understand just how wonderful and special dogs are.

Everything we are is anchored in our childhoods. The drama comes in how we deal with it. Are we slaves to our past, or can we rise above it? This is the stuff of great stories.

People want you to be ordinary.

It's easy to sound good. All you do is leave in the parts where you act tough and forget the parts where you get shoved around.