I studied poetry in college and for a year in an MFA program. As time went on, my poems got more and more complicated. What I was really trying to do was tell stories.
Honestly, I feel pretty awed anytime I meet just about any writer. I get how hard it is to write and make a living from it, but there's also this almost magical force you need to tap into, and I'm amazed by anyone who can do it.
If there was a way to bring someone back, would you do it, no matter what the consequences might be? I know that for me, my logical mind says, 'Of course not!' But the truth is, when you lose someone who is so close to you, it's as if they are a part of you; there's always one more thing to say, one more moment you wish you'd had.
I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair.
Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me.
I've never done a sequel - so far, there have been too many new stories and characters calling my name.
People often ask if my books should be read in any particular order, but they're all standalone novels, so picking up any one of them would be fine.
I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way.
I have a pretty open mind about supernatural stuff - I do believe that there's more to this world than what meets the eye.
I think of setting as almost a character of its own, influencing the other characters in ways they're not even aware of. So much of the success of a good ghost story rides on creating a creepy atmosphere; details of the landscape itself can help create a sense of dread.
I do believe in ghosts, or at least in some kind of persistent spiritual echoes of the past in certain places.
In all honesty, I didn't love reading when I was a kid. I'd rather be running around in the woods or doing my best to scare the pants off all the children in the neighborhood by pretending my house was haunted or making them play Bloody Mary in the bathroom.
I found many treasures in the woods over the years: shotgun shells, empty Colt 45 bottles, old railroad spikes, orange and black beetles eating a dead mouse, pebbles that looked just like teeth, old stone walls and cellar holes, a rusted out frying pan, the skull of a cat.
Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time.
My grandmother was a psychiatrist and possibly the ultimate of all skeptics. But even she couldn't explain the strange noises we so often heard in the attic.
I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same.
Do me a favor - right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.
I graduated with a B.A. from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College.
At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed.
You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly.