Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you're safe on the other side of them.

Sometimes I think I'm a one-trick pony because I'm not very inventive about new ways of telling stories.

When you feel lousy, puppy therapy is indicated.

I believe that to create real-seeming characters, the writer must be willing to go on a voyage of self-exploration. It can be revealing and even painful to explore your own weakness, but it gives you genuine emotion. Characters in fiction come alive because of the believability of their emotional lives and that is what I strive to create.

I think Peter Dickinson is hands down the best stylist as a writer and the most interesting storyteller in my genre.

I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.

Capo, my first golden retriever, so loved to swim she once jumped off a cliff to get into Lake Superior.