As writers, we must keep throwing problems at our characters. Conflict is the heart of good storytelling. Hiking in nature along a twisting trail can remind us what a good story feels like. It's the opposite of a treadmill - or an interstate highway.

I'm still driven by the feeling I had when I wrote my first book or read a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle adventure.

One of the best essays I've seen in recent years was by a young woman who wrote about how being chosen to choreograph a high school musical forced her to assume a leadership role she wasn't sure she was ready for - but of course she was.

Early in my publishing career, someone told me I'd need to have five books in print before I could quit my job as a journalist. Turns out it was closer to 10 books. It also turns out that while it's great to see my titles on bookstore shelves, my best customers are schools and libraries.

The history of New Orleans was always a fascination to me - such a blend of light and darkness and plague and pleasure and hedonism and fear and death. It's just a very, very intriguing city. I have this strange love relationship with it.

It was a lovely feeling, dying. I can remember being in the hospital, all wired up to tubes and thinking, 'If only you'd take these tubes out, it feels so nice.' It felt so - it felt like being in a bath of velvet. It was such a nice feeling. Everything felt so soft and floppy, and I wanted to go.

I think that obviously, there is a perverse attraction to a fundamentally changed world or the end of the world. There is a death wish, a perverse death wish. Not just for ourselves, not just for the movie 'Death Wish,' but for the end of all human life.

I love 'Death Race.' It's one of my favorite films.