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The coming-of-age story has sort of become a joke. It's something to capitalize on, and that is painful because when you are coming of age - when you are going through something like that - the genre is so meaningful.

Although I sometimes enjoy writing from an adult's perspective, I feel dedicated to the coming of age story - that part of a young person's life where he must make a decision that will change his life forever. I still remember what it's like to be twelve years old.

I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young characters.

When I wrote my first story, all the characters were teenagers because I think 16, 17 is a great age.

Your reader is interested in a guileless, fresh, first-time-we-talked-about-it way. What a great liberation that is. And teenagers, if you respect them, will follow you a lot further than adults will, without fear of being a genre that they may not like or have been told not to like. They just want a story.

I love coming of age stories that have struggle.

But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls' point of view, I've heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.

I kind of just write what I like to write. I'm thankful that readers of different ages seem to connect to my stories. I don't consciously think about age demographics when I'm working on my comics.

I tend to think of stories and books as being for everyone, just with an 'entry reading age' rather than an age range.

I was a late bloomer. I was 38 when my first book was out and 43 when my first crime novel was out. I had a story that could only be told as a crime story. I think the genre is good; it deals with the fundamental questions of life and death. The problem is there are too many bad crime stories.