From Formspring: Do you ever get creative ideas or a good wording for something right as you're going to sleep? If so, do you wake up and write them out, or do you go to sleep and try to remember them later?

Yes, but I tend to get them while I'm driving. I don't know why, that's just when they come to me. I can usually remember them well enough later, but I have a little note-pad in my truck in case I need to jot it down.

The kind of things that come to me that way tend to be the jokes or humorous situations I sometimes put characters in. In you put a lot of time and effort into creating a character, they eventually take on a life of their own. At that point, random thoughts and situations pop into your head.

For example, in my first book Meg invites some of her friends to a birthday party at Garrett Terago's house. Dragons don't really celebrate their birthday, so this is something new to him. He invites a couple of his dragon friends (no one but Meg knows they are actually dragons) but some unexpected guests arrive. Because this is a kind of fancy party (Garrett has a HUGE house) everyone is dressed very nice. Meg's room mate Yvonne is wearing a very small, skimpy dress that looks like it came out of a tube. When Xyus--one of the uninvited dragon guests--sees Yvonne, he comments that this is going to be a good party: Terago hired a stripper.

Yvonne's reaction to this is priceless, and one of my favorite scenes in the book. And it practically wrote itself, based on the personality I'd given Yvonne and how I believe a real woman like her would react to being mistaken for a stripper at a party by a very rich, very handsome stranger.

I'm not going to tell you what she says, but it's cute.

Ask me anything