When I was getting ready for the release of 'Deadline,' when it was coming out soon, I decided that the appropriate way to get people excited about the book would be to write a novella in 30 pieces and publish a piece on my blog every day for a month... during a convention, a week-and-a-half-long trip to New York, and a doll traders' expo.

I think part of the pressure put on 'strong female characters' comes from the fact that there is so often 'the team girl,' who must be all things to all people. Part of avoiding that is having as many female characters as I can, and allowing them to thrive in their own right, not inside a framework they didn't ask for and don't want.

I am a cisgender woman who has always had a lot of female friends. While many of us have traits in common, none of us will ever be exactly the same. So it's enormously important to me that my female characters be people, and be allowed to be whatever they need to be.

I believe that humans are pretty awesome but we are not capable of understanding what heaven would look like while we're alive because whatever is out there is so much bigger than we are.

I want a little black girl to pick up my book one day and see herself as the star. I want her to know that she's beautiful, and she matters, and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger.

When I had money in the past, I would always travel rather than spend it on big apartments or cars. And I still feel exactly the same way.

You can't call it an adventure unless it's tinged with danger. The greatest danger in life, though, is not taking the adventure at all. To have the objective of a life of ease is death. I think we've all got to go after our own Everest.

If you were to actually travel around schools and universities and listen in on lectures about evolution, you might find a fairly substantial fraction of young people, without knowing what it is they disapprove of, think they disapprove of it, because they've been brought up to.