Math was always my best subject growing up.

A Head Full of Ghosts' was my first full horror novel, and that felt like coming home as a writer.

After my debut didn't go very well with Holt, I needed to be in a healthier head space. I was happy to emerge from there. You will always have those negative thoughts as a writer, but you can't let them take over. If you let them take over, those are the real page killers.

As an adult, I've learned to cope and pull the plug on the worst what-ifs before my mind takes me to a place from which I can't return.

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

I'd always done family-friendly stuff. I wanted to do a film where I could show my darker side and make people uncomfortable.

You have to make people feel things. I think that's what commercials are, from a commercial for a car, a phone or anything that might be, they want to do it. The first iPhone was sold by how exciting it was to hold pictures of your family, not how great a phone it was.

Many Americans who have suffered during a recession have had to cut their spending 1 percent, and they didn't like doing it, but they were able to do it to get their family's finances back in order.