I entered a poem in a poetry contest around 1987, and the poem won and I received $1,000 for it. That made me realize that maybe what I was writing was worth reading to people. After that, for some reason, I turned to novels and I've written mainly novels ever since.

Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.

I love the way that each book -- any book -- is its own journey. You open it, and off you go. You are changed in some way, large or small, by having traveled with those characters.

It wasn't that I was stupid ... It was just that there didn't seem to be a lot to say that someone wasn't already saying.

I am drawn to the ways in which we are shaped by people and by place.

I once fell 20 feet from a tree, was knocked unconscious, and when I picked myself up and straggled home, my parents thought I was making it up. However, when my brother and I fabricated a story about an encounter with a bear, they believed that! So maybe I learned very early on that fiction was more interesting to listeners!

When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.