I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

This was a memory I wanted to keep, whole, and recall again and again. When I was fifty years old I wanted to remember this moment on the porch, holding hands with Cameron while he shared himself with me. I didn’t want it to be something on the fringes of my memory like so many other things about Cameron and myself.

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi's 'Winter' and being so overwhelmed with emotion.

I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.