My whole life has been one big broken promise.

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.

I don’t want these memories to become slippery, to just disappear into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick – even the bad ones – so I repeat them often.

Sometimes you want to hear your own mother's voice.

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

It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you.