My parents met in music school, and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can.

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

I want to be an incredible father, an incredible husband and take great care of my wife and all my kids and do what I love to do during the day to provide for them. That, ultimately, is what I see as being successful. I just aspire to be even half of how wonderful as my parents are.

I think that two people who decide to live together in a marriage situation, they have an obligation to make the marriage work for them.

Tom Bradford is a lot like the real me. He's a man who always put his career second to his family. As long as everything was OK at home, he was OK, too.

I remember I took an editorial, and I was so excited. I got the pictures back, and I looked in the magazine, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh!' My arms were half their size, and I had a thigh gap magically, and all these crazy things. My family went out and tried to find my pictures in the magazines, but no one could recognize me.