I picture my books as movies when I get stuck, and when I’m working on a new idea, the first thing I do is hit theaters to work out pacing and mood.
I really love nature. I grew up in the country. But one of the things about nature is that it is beautiful but it’s also very dangerous.
I think that whenever a book is not a challenge, I’m telling the wrong story.
I’m a dirt road out in the country kind of person, but I remember thinking, I could live in Chicago.
In the end, you have to write like you’re not afraid of the critics.
I don’t cry at books or movies. Ever. So imagine my shock and awe when I read ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ for the second time, and I knew the ending, and I started to cry.
I love inventing interesting people and then pushing them to their absolute limits – and usually those absolute limits involve homicidal faeries, werewolves, or some other paranormal menace.
I would like to say that I was inspired to write ‘Shiver’ by some overwhelming belief in true love, but here’s my true confession: I wrote ‘Shiver’ because I like to make people cry.
When I was a child, I was one of the kids who wore black all the time, and when the kids asked me why I wore black, I said things like, ‘I’m mourning the death of modern society.’ I mean, I was a riot.
The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while Foster the People plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.
In a culture defined by shades of gray, I think the absolute black and white choices in dark young adult novels are incredibly satisfying for readers.
Mother and daughter like spoons in a drawer.
I feel like I have so many stories basting in my mind, and they come busting out when they’re ready.
I don’t think I could ever give up music. It’s what makes me tick. If there was no music, there would be no writing.
I focus on the elements of a movie that are meant to invisibly affect me as a viewer. The edges. As an author, Im aware of how the subconscious things can pluck at a readers emotions, and I love it when filmmakers do the same.
When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood.
So here’s my theory, and this is such crap science, I don’t have to tell you. It’s science without microscopes, blood tests, or reality.
I’d be happy with this summer if it’s all we ever had.
There’s no such thing as a good book or a bad book. There’s a book that matters to a reader.
My good mood felt like an endangered species.