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Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

There are certainly times when my own everyday life seems to retreat so the life of the story can take me over. That is why a writer often needs space and time, so that he or she can abandon ordinary life and 'live' with the characters.

I think about the characters I've created and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did. It's spooky.

Writing this book feels like a completely different activity from writing my comic strip because it's about real life. I feel like I'm using a part of my brain that's been dormant until now.

I'm constantly being surprised and finding unplanned things - because the writing is a process of experiencing things on the ground with the characters.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better.

I hope the wonder of what happens to my characters never goes away. That yearning keeps me writing.

Any time you read a book and get attached to the characters, to me it's always a shock when it goes from page to screen and it's not exactly what was in my head or what I was imagining it should be.