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For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.

I wrote my first book at 20, but my whole focus from about the age of 12 was to be a writer.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.

I really started considering myself a writer when I was about seven or eight years old. I wrote stories from my dreams and kept them all in a notebook that I still have.

My first job, 9 years old, part-time, was selling Christmas cards door-to-door. Ten years old, my brother and I had paper routes. We delivered a morning paper called the 'L.A. Examiner.' Get up at 4 o'clock, fold your papers, deliver them and get ready for school.

The child from nine to 12 interests me very much. And so, those were the years that I like to write about, when I'm writing.

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way to becoming a writer, including toy maker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and assembly line worker. Eventually, I became an elementary teacher and worked with second and fourth graders.

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

I feel lucky that my career so far has included books for adults and books for kids. They're equally important to me, and I hope I get to continue writing both.

I like working in children's books because it gives rise to such a variety of jobs. One month it may be a picture book, the next a retelling, the next a play, a short story or the start of the next novel.