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I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.

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.

All of my characters are a little bit based on people I know in real life. You know when you do that you have to change the character a little bit in case your friend or your relative reads the book, because you don't want them to know you wrote about them... They might get mad.

I don't think of the characters as being good or bad because that doesn't help me as a writer.

I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.

I think, above all, the characters in my novels feel universal to the readers.

Unlike life, you've got more or less complete control over what's going on in your stories. That's not to say you can make characters do whatever you want them to - they usually have a life of their own if you've done your job properly.

I don't judge my characters.

The goal is to have every character take on a life of his or her own. Sometimes characters will come into the story that I haven't planned.