To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.

I think a setting is hugely important. I look at setting as a character with its own look, sound, history, quirks, goofy temperaments and moods.

I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.

I understood right from the start that every set of library doors were the sort of magic portals that lead to other lands. My God, right within reach there were dinosaurs and planets and presidents and girl detectives!

We used to really feel like the band was our family.

I was always a neat kid. I never wanted my hands dirty. I wasn't a dirty kid. A lot of kids like to run around. If I was rolling around the dirt, I went home and took a shower. That's just the way I was. I'm not sure. I might have been born with it.

I was in Vietnam, and I was exposed to Agent Orange. And there's a high relationship between people that were exposed to Agent Orange and the kind of lymphoma that I had. The prostate cancer was genetic in my family. My father had prostate cancer, my - three of my four uncles had prostate cancer.

I come from a family of losers, and I've rejected my family as something I don't want to be like.