As long as I can remember, I've been writing - first poems, then stories, and by my early teenage years I was also in love with sailing.

I had a great AP U.S. History teacher in Pittsburgh. We still exchange Christmas cards. She was the first teacher who said I was a good writer - and I'd never heard that before. And so I remember that, and I remember that level of loving the material and really loving writing about it.

I follow the Patriots, but the Steelers were my first and true love. I still have a 'Terrible Towel.'

I've been writing in some way, shape, or form for as long as I can remember.

In my early 20s, I was a big fan of Theodore Dreiser and might be one of the few people on the planet who have voluntarily read all his novels.

Nantucket's English settlers, who first disembarked on the island in 1659, had been mindful of the sea's dangers. They had hoped to earn their livelihoods not as fishermen but as farmers and shepherds on this grassy isle dotted with ponds, where no wolves preyed.