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When I was as little as four years old, my mom would give me a pen and paper and tell me to write a story to keep me busy.

I would be writing while I was breastfeeding. I didn't want the computer to be too close to her, so it was at an arm's distance away while I was clickety-clack typing away.

Honestly, I'm living my fantasy. It's being with my family, preferably on a snowy afternoon with a fire going, cuddled up in blankets, playing a game.

Me and my brother lived in kind of a shed behind our house, and it was cold. We really lived kind of a dirty existence. It was tough to move away from my father and grandfather in California. I wore socks that were so dirty they were hard and black, and I would go into the lost and found box at school and look for clothes.

As a child, I would demand that visitors to our house tell me a story. I was intensely interested in everything - still am.

I wrote a lot of 'Red Queen' wrapped in a blanket, cramped up while watching the snow come down.

I'd come to the country to do my Thoreau bit, so I needed an office that looked out onto the woods for inspiration. I converted one of the bedrooms into my workspace and through its windows watched the wildlife appear each morning with the sunrise. Many were the days I would sit in wonder, coffee in hand, for hours.

My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.

All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.

There would be nights when I would wake up and couldn't get back to sleep. So I would go downstairs and write. The staff had a pool going on how many pages of typing I would bring in here in the morning.