Q: How long have you been writing?

A: Pretty much since I could hold a pencil. Every year at the beginning of school, I would convince my parents to buy me a huge stack of spiral-bound notebooks and then I would, day after day, fill each one with stories, doodles, and notes about my life. I stored these notebooks (with the pictures of my celebrity crushes at the time taped to the cover) in a large moving box until, tragically, they were all lost to a house fire in 2012, along with most of my possessions. At any rate, I’ve been telling stories for as long as I can remember and I never really stopped.

Q: Do you have any hobbies?

A: Mostly, writing is my hobby besides being my first love. I have a “real” job in addition to parenting a young child, so my days are pretty full. But when I’m not writing, I love to read and I consume super hero movies like my very existence depends on it. No matter how tired I am, I will be the first one in the theater to see any new Marvel release (Captain America is my fave!). Back in my pre-kid days, I used to play video games and I still try to squeeze in a quick round of Candy Crush while standing in line at the grocery store now and then. I also read. A lot.

Q: What are your favorite sorts of books to read?

A: I am in love with love stories. Whatever shape they come in, a good love story will keep me on the hook. In my youth, I used to devour mystery novels and short horror stories (only during the middle of the day), but my taste eventually settled on romance. Now that’s just about all I read, with the occasional break for an outstanding thriller or any work of fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes (my literary hero). I consume books in pairs, usually switching off between a romance novel and a non-fiction title depending on my mood.

Q: What does your writing day look like?

A: Catch as catch can, for the moment. With a little dictator running my schedule (and yes, I mean my child), I squeeze in writing wherever possible. Sometimes, I am forced out of the house and into a coffee shop at night in order to get my daily word count in, but mostly I settle at my desk at home with a mug of coffee during naptimes or a particularly enthralling episode of Barney the Dinosaur. My only goal is to write every day – even if I only get down 100 words, I must sit at the computer and write.

Q: Nebraska was your first published work. Tell us the story behind that book.

A: I wrote the first draft of Nebraska when I was fourteen years old. It looked almost nothing at all like the current book, except perhaps for the character’s names (Tim was a jobless drug addict, I believe). Anyway, I wrote the second draft about ten years later and then the final version about six years after that. So, in one way or another, I’ve been working on this novel for about sixteen years (though by no means consecutively). It’s a story I felt like I had to tell – it wouldn’t release me until I had finished. And now that it’s out for the world to see, I can stand back and look at the entire process, which is something I feel very good about.