Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!
Alicia Silverstone from 'Clueless' plays the role of the quintessential buttoned-up beauty who still knows how to throw down. She's intimidating from a distance but happy to befriend the new girl and show her the lay of the land.
Steve McQueen from 'The Getaway' is tough and independent. He can be diffident but is unabashed when it comes to love. And he's undeniably sexy.
Be fearless. Be glib. Be enigmatic. Read. Never give up.
Fallen angels could not enter sanctuaries of God. The moment they crossed the threshold, the house of worship would go up in flames, incinerating every mortal inside.
It's worth pointing out that no one faults a male protagonist for falling in love. What is it about a boy needing a girl that seems to round out his character, while a girl needing a boy can be dismissed as pathetic?
At some point, I fell in love. Shortly thereafter, I got my heart broken. Sniff, sniff. And I realized at a young age - no matter what any adult literary critic would have us believe about female strength and autonomy - there is no test to strength of character like love.
People ask me, 'Why angels? Why paranormal? Why teens?' In the beginning, I'm not sure I knew I was starting down any of those twisted paths - paths that now seem so familiar to me that they are downright comforting. In the beginning, I was just writing about love.
I believe love's grip transcends gender. It transcends everything short of a very few primal needs like hunger, thirst, a need for oxygen.
Before 'Fallen,' I'd written love stories and more love stories. I'd fallen in love with love stories - but they were also beginning to feel just a little bit too insular, too small.
When I sit down to write a scene, I have a plan in mind, and I'm thrilled when a character disregards my goals and takes the story to a place I hadn't imagined.
Cooking is the best way to unwind at the end of a long writing day. There's something mindless and hands-on about cooking, which makes it feel like the very opposite of writing, which is heady but inactive.
I buy way too many cookbooks and read food blogs at night when I can't sleep.
Occasionally I volunteer in the kitchen of a pop-up supper club in L.A., which I really love. It's like being a line cook in a great restaurant for one night at a time.
I don't write about love because it makes for easy, passive heroes. I write about how love makes my characters more autonomous, more self-possessed, more opinionated and powerful. I write about characters who pursue relationships that make them the people they want to become. I write about love as a superpower.
Olivia Hussey from Zefferelli's 'Romeo and Juliet' makes the intense vulnerability of true love look magnificent.
Cam disappears at the end of 'Rapture.' It was the only way for me to say good-bye to him at the time, and it's the way he prefers to split, anyway. I always knew I would return to him. He's been my favorite from the start. Readers have long asked what happened to him, but I had to wait for his story to come to me on its own.
My process has changed in recent years because I now have two young kids. I have to be more regimented. The days are very short.
I tend to write some, then outline some, then delete some, then go back and rewrite some. I love revising and hate first drafts. I have to wear bedroom slippers. My current favorites come from the Zetter Hotel in London. They have little tobacco pipes on the toes.
