As a reader, I'm often put off by authors and story-lines without families or children and all of the angst and joy they bring with them.

I love to feature children and young adults as real people - flawed, naive, virtuous, venal - but real. I think it adds nuance and depth to the stories that wouldn't exist without them.

Seems like people always want to think they're doomed. It brings them some kind of black comfort, I guess.

Nate

I do like the research part of writing, I must admit.

I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline.

It was heartfelt, it was heartbreaking. It was extreme joy, it was bone-crushing grief. It was fiery hot, it was icy-cold. It was true love sprouting... it was true love dying.

It's like we were both trying to hold onto something that was slipping through our fingers, and we didn't understand why.