When I was growing up on our 53-acre dairy farm, we were obsessed with food; it was the center of our lives. We planted it, grew it, harvested it, peeled it, cooked it, served it, consumed it - endlessly, day after day, season after season.

I suppose the desire to go to town helped make me ambitious, and the allure of the worlds that came in over the radio also helped. But the rewards of growing up on a farm were far greater in many ways than life in town.

Rock and roll is about desire, about wanting something better. I think my characters all want something better. My understanding of the rock and roll dream is that a kid in an isolated place or a small town or an underprivileged world could transcend it somehow.

Some people will stay at home and be content there. Others are born to run. It's that conflict that fascinates me.

Growing up in Kansas City, I was always neat, the teacher's pet, know-it-all type.

The U.N. has brought peace and order to many places around the world. However, terrorism, violent extremism, violations of human rights, natural disasters caused by climate change - they all threaten the lives of people today. Add migration, insufficient health care, lack of education, and the picture gets even bleaker.

The Purdue education was fine, but I wasn't ready to learn when I was at Purdue.

I wrote about a bird that cleaned a crocodile's teeth. The story was so good that my teacher could not believe that a ten-year-old could write that well. I was even punished because my teacher thought I'd lied about writing it! I had always loved to write, but it was then that I realized that I had a talent for it.