Growing up, I've always felt I was from two different worlds. I was born in the U.S., but my parents were born in Vietnam, and they raised my sisters and I with the parenting methods of the Vietnamese culture.

I knew what it was like growing up in a world where I never saw myself in anything.

When I'm driving past the place I used to work, or when I'm driving past the comedy studio where I used to take photos in exchange for classes, or when I'm driving past the yoga studio I used to clean on the weekends - it's not that far removed from me yet. I get very sentimental over things like that.

I worked in an office. I was like an assistant. So, I would just answer phone calls, coordinate events. It was a great day job. I worked with amazing people, but obviously, whenever you are doing something that's not your dream, you kind of feel like, 'Oh, I'm on this grind.'

A depressed person is often a person who will push others away. If you are pushed away and pushed away and pushed away, you have to have an enormous amount of inner resources to keep going back.

I do have high standards. I look at everything I have done and think, 'Why wasn't that better?' Part of my motivation is from crippling self-doubt - I have got to prove myself wrong.

Part of my motivation for writing mysteries for young people is that I loved mysteries when I was growing up, and now that I'm on the creative end of things, I'm discovering that they're even more fun to write!

Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.