Describe your desk
"This isn't a landfill." Although it might look like one, I actually do know most of what's in those piles. Really. I do know. Most of the time.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
Tough question to answer since my family moved every 2 or 3 years..and we weren't military or on the run from the law. I was born in Michigan, then we moved to Chicago, then Seattle, then Kansas City, then Kirksville, Missouri, back to Kansas City and then York PA. I hated Pennsylvania....I'm a Midwestern kid! My dad, a doctor, yes, really, was first in Family Practice, then took a job as a medical magazine editor, then back to Family Practice in Seattle, then onto a Pathology residency. From then on, it was improving his job situation.
Because of all the moving, I learned to adapt quickly to my new surroundings, sort of like a shapeshifter I have odd gaps in my education, like geography. That subject was always the year before or the year after the current school I was in. I come from a family of readers, and books got me through all those moves and lonely high school years.
Read more of this interview.