The truth was I felt ugly growing up. I only really started feeling comfortable in myself when I was 40.

I suffer from low self-esteem. I had horrible self-esteem growing up. You really have to save yourself because the critic within you will eat you up. It's not the outside world - it's your interior life, that critic within you, that you have to silence.

Intelligence is sexy. Don't play dumb, especially young girls. Don't play dumb. And let people see that you are intelligent.

On a Friday night in 1983, I was in a taxi in New York riding home from dinner with friends. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the cab, and I was thrown toward the glass partition. I tried to duck, but my face hit the glass, and the impact fractured my cheekbone, my eye socket, my collarbone and several ribs.

I just don't find marriage a necessary step in a couple's life.

Readers really want to come back to an author; they do not want a one-book wonder. That is all very well, but to be career author, you have to be prepared to write one really good book and then write another really good book and keep feeding your readers. You build your audience over a long time.

Ajnabee' is a thriller. I play a married man trapped by mysterious circumstances. The film does have a lot of romance and action, but it's not based on 'Consenting Adults.'

I love writing romance, along with science fiction and fantasy - and my books usually meld all three to some degree.