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After starting as a journalist for newspapers and magazines, I began to write books and had success with a novel and four nonfiction books for young adults.

I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book.

When I was 16, I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines.

I worked in publishing before I became an author, so I knew how a book gets made.

While writing my first 90 books, I was magazine editor, publisher, book publisher, executive, etc., so I was established in publishing. three of my seven or so books were biographies of sports stars and really opened doors for me in that area.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

I realized very young that I loved reading and wanted to do something related to books/reading for a living. I didn't think of publishing, really, until I was out of college.

I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.