Pike put down the cat. He slid from Pike's arms like molasses and puddled at his feet.

I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.

Efficiency and focus are the keys to success.

If my vision was good enough, I'd be an astronaut.

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.

My family was all police and hard hats at the refineries; they didn't know what to think about me. So I became a closet writer.

My fiction is almost always inspired by a character's need or desire to rise above him- or herself. No one is perfect and some of us have much adversity in our lives; it is those people who struggle to rise above their nature or background that I find the most interesting and heroic.