I have a real weakness for Generation One Transformers. Only Generation One. I loved them as a kid, and I will, when I have the money, search occasionally for the toys that I could not afford but deeply desired as a child.

First published in 1984 when I was nothing more than sticks of bone at seven, 'Dragons of Autumn Twilight' began what would be one of the icons of my grunge-stained disenchanted childhood.

I was, without a sliver of a doubt, a no-good, lazy slacker of a child, and after I discovered literature, I was totally and utterly a no-good, lazy slacker of a child who read books. A lot of books, good and bad, but my favourite - the books I read and reread in my teens - were by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Both villains and heroes are a bit boring, really, unless they're flawed and broken somehow. If they're not flawed and broken, then clearly they need to be broken and made flawed. That's what an author does if he or she has any dignity.

Comedy to the Senate? Well, there certainly hasn't been a satirist or a political satirist who's done that. So, that really was uncharted territory during the campaign. But I think it's a good thing. Some people thought that it was an odd career arc, but to me it made absolute sense.

We have held forums here at the White House on workplace flexibility, and the first major bill signed into law by President Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Lilly was here a few weeks ago because we were trying very hard to push paycheck fairness through the Congress. Unfortunately, we fell two votes short.

A lot of producers cookie cut movies one after another, but I'll be a little more careful, and have the opportunity to be, because I have the acting career to subsidize the producing.

The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.