Dear Aspiring Author Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.

I believe the first story I ever wrote was about a young girl who was terribly mistreated by her very cruel parents, and one day the girl fled to the woods to live amongst a pack of wolves. Hey, I was eleven, loved wolves, and had been grounded for what I felt was a minor infraction. Can you blame me?

Death has an energy. It is thick as sludge, heavy as iron, and pulls you down into yourself like an imploding building.

What kind of a man thinks it's appropriate to give his soon-to-be bride a lethal weapon for a wedding present?

Now death is death! and yet is not one death Another death? Stabbing is not the same As shooting! Would you say a strangled man Was drown'd? The end is one, the means are many, And there the difference lies!

In Birmingham, the women are maintained, the men are greedily lustful, and the children are named after high-end automobiles. You are just as likely to run into a Bentley, Mercedes, Porsche, and Lexus walking on the sidewalk as you are cruising the downtown streets.

To write three series a year you only need to commit to writing 10 pages per day, or editing 50 pages of text per day. Plus, writing is my job, and I need to write to eat, so I'm highly motivated to get up and get to work!

Am I the only one who secretly hopes that the Curiosity rover will be swallowed up by a giant alien worm living just below Mars's surface?

Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.

Life is full of chances -- and those times when we each trust our own guts and have a terrific outcome reaffirms our ability to make good decisions.

My motto is: When in doubt, just keep lying. Even if you're terrible at it.