Life is full of chances -- and those times when we each trust our own guts and have a terrific outcome reaffirms our ability to make good decisions.

Death has an energy. It is thick as sludge, heavy as iron, and pulls you down into yourself like an imploding building.

In Birmingham, the women are maintained, the men are greedily lustful, and the children are named after high-end automobiles. You are just as likely to run into a Bentley, Mercedes, Porsche, and Lexus walking on the sidewalk as you are cruising the downtown streets.

Here's a news flash--writers are selfish people. Truth is, creative types like me are driven by one impulse--to make up a world in which we get to control everything and everyone. We decide who enters and who exits, what the weather will be, who will hook up with whom, who will win and who will lose. It makes us feel powerful and, in all honesty, has relatively little to do with thinking about what will make anyone else happy.

Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.

That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.

Life is full of chances -- and those times when we each trust our own guts and have a terrific outcome reaffirms our ability to make good decisions.