A lot of journalists are talented enough to write a mystery novel, and I would say that most of the top-end mystery writers actually started out as reporters. But there is more to it than just the writing; there's a learning process, and most journalists aren't willing to do it.

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'

People in California don't live in a place so much as they do a condition.

I'd like to think that, when I explain it, that Mr. Trump will understand marriage is defined by two people who love each other, commit to each other, and will care for each other through thick and thin.

I have had a love-hate relationship with my body.

I'm about the only person in my family that's made it to 24 without being married. That's the way it works where I'm from. Most people, if you find someone to marry in high school, you do that, and if you don't find that, then you find someone in college.

My mom was married to a Mexican guy - a surfer - and so we'd kind of camp out on the beach the swell season.