When I was coming to terms with my sexuality, I often felt like I needed to seek out sanctuary outside of my house, and the library was the first place I went. It was a place that I could go and seek out information and look for answers to questions that maybe I was too afraid to ask another person.

When I wrote 'The Assistants,' I knew very much that I wanted to write about income inequality and student loan debt and the gender wage gap, but I wanted to put it in a really slick, fun package. That book ended up being described as a socially conscious novel in chick-lit clothing.

I wanted to write a book about two women falling in love that wasn't hinged on tragedy or that involved some horrible identity-based misfortune. I wanted to write a pretty standard romantic comedy where nobody dies, nobody gets hurt, nobody gets sick.

I certainly firsthand know and love people who didn't fall in love with a woman or didn't even realize they were attracted to women until much later in life, and I'm sure that's true for many men who find themselves attracted to men as well. It doesn't always happen in adolescence. And that experience is completely valid and OK.

My parents met at Fort Riley, Kan., during World War II. My father was an Army civilian; he had been trampled by a horse in his youth and couldn't enlist. My mother was studying to be a nurse and, when war broke out, joined the Women's Army Corps without even telling her parents.

Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying.

I got married and had a baby, so I was doing the mummy thing. I got hyperemesis and was only supposed to go away for maternity leave, but then it ended up being three or four years, and by that time, it was hard to get back into the music world, so when Drake called, it was the perfect opportunity.

Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.