I try to begin with a strong grasp of my characters. Even if it's schematic, I need it clear in my head who these people are.

We need to preserve our neighborhoods, our small business, our local economy.

I keep an elaborate calendar for my characters detailing on which dates everything happens. I'm constantly revising this as I go along. It gives me the freedom to intricately plot my story, knowing it will at least hold up on a timeline.

When you need a good laugh, do you reach for a book? I don't. I expect books to move me deeply and submerge me in another reality. So when a novel makes me roar with laughter, it's always a delightful surprise.

I just feel like there's this illicit thrill in reading other people's mail and spying on their lives.

In TV writing, I felt like Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians. There's so much more freedom in fiction writing.