Athletics are not my wheelhouse because sports were mean to this uncoordinated kid growing up, a 6-foot-2 14-year-old who never could do a layup.

But I believe that there are marriages where you can have your pool table and she can have her scrapbooking room or garden or whatever it is. But when everyone has what they want, it's not funny. There's no conflict.

I was a strange kid. I never really fit in; I was never comfortable in my own skin because I was a giant kid with no athletic ability.

There is the real person I am, and there is the stage persona.

Early in the morning, I fell in love with the girl that later on became my wife. At that time, we were so naive. I wanted to charm her, so I read her Capital by Marx. I thought somehow she would be convinced by the strength of his criticism about capital.

If you lift the romantic element out of my plots, you still have fully formed mysteries. In the same fashion, if you pull the mystery out of a historical romance, you are left with a perfectly satisfying story.

I've always really been a romantic at heart, and I have always wanted kids, and I think the idea of sharing your life with the right person is amazing, actually.

My mother's sister married a man from Barbados, and my cousins were raised in Barbados. So we traveled down there, they came up every summer for camp, and I started paying attention to their music. And that was the first place I ever remember hearing reggae and liking it.