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I kind of date my musical discovery back to when I was 13 years old, getting my iTunes account and using that as a major tool to discover new music.

This is how much of a music geek I am: if I have a day with nothing to do, one of my favourite things is to just sit at my computer and make playlists of pretty much anything.

I started writing songs at 17.

For my birthday this year, my girlfriends - who knew I'd just inherited my dad's turntable - gave me a carton of albums like 'Blue Kentucky Girl,' by Emmylou Harris, and 'Off the Wall,' by Michael Jackson. It's all stuff we grew up with. I mean, you can't have a music collection without Prince's 'Purple Rain' - it just can't be done!

I write all year, and at the end of the year I put an album out. And if sucks, it sucks, and if it's good, it's good. I just let it lay where it lays. It doesn't stop from doing another one next year.

Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on.

I feel like my songs are like diary entries for me. So I usually write about things that have happened to me specifically or sometimes it can be someone who's close to me.

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.