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I spent 20 years of my career primarily being a writer for hire.

I had a wonderful and very successful career in New York and had the privilege of working with some of the best editors and publishers in the business.

By the time I started high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, I moved to New York City and worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson.

I just feel really fortunate to build a career as a writer.

I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.

I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.