I'll cough up the bitter truth right now, at the risk of losing my Feminism Club Decoder Ring: I didn't go see 'Inside Out' for Amy Poehler, though she's terrific. I went to see my dark prince, Lewis Black.

When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.

When I first quit my day job, I was terrified. I called my editors and said I'm trying to make a go of this, and they threw every contract at me they could. And for two years, I had a book or an anthology out every month.

The silly antics that would get me in trouble at school have put me on the best-seller list. So I guess the moral here is ignore your teach... never mind. That's not the moral. Probably.

I make more money than I need, ever.

Novelty is the universal cry - novelty by hook or by crook! It is an exceedingly common mania among people of inordinate wealth to exact incessantly new or so-called new dishes.

With my business, the way you make big money is you find a great management team and a good concept, and you stick to it, and you add to it over time. In philanthropy, there was more this idea that once an idea was formulated, you moved along.

In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.