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

Am I the only one who secretly hopes that the Curiosity rover will be swallowed up by a giant alien worm living just below Mars's surface?

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.

To write three series a year you only need to commit to writing 10 pages per day, or editing 50 pages of text per day. Plus, writing is my job, and I need to write to eat, so I'm highly motivated to get up and get to work!

I believe the first story I ever wrote was about a young girl who was terribly mistreated by her very cruel parents, and one day the girl fled to the woods to live amongst a pack of wolves. Hey, I was eleven, loved wolves, and had been grounded for what I felt was a minor infraction. Can you blame me?

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.

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