I like the idea of federal employees licensed to carry weapons who are also heavily medicated; it just works for me on all sorts of levels.

I'd go to a bookstore, and I'd flip through flap copy, and I'd think, 'If this gal can get published, I can get published.'

I'm really fortunate that I type 120 words a minute.

I used to be a model and a medical test subject, though never at the same time. And since we didn't have much money when I was a kid, I know how to fish and hunt for my supper. And I used to win awards in speech in high school, which comes in handy when I speak to 200 people at a writers' conference.

When I wrote the first Betsy book, 'Undead and Unwed,' I had no idea, none, that it would be a career-defining, genre-defining book, the first of over a dozen in the series, the first of over 70 published books, the first on my road to the best-seller list, the first on my road to being published in 15 countries.

I can't not write funny. It's literally the only way I know how to do it.

The silly antics that would get me in trouble at school have put me on the best-seller list. So I guess the moral here is ignore your teach... never mind. That's not the moral. Probably.

I'm more to my family than a wonderful, luminous cook. I'm also a wonderful, luminous butler and a wonderful, luminous chauffer. And checkbook. I'm a luminous checkbook, too.

I might occasionally forget how to open a car door and have too many shower curtains, but I've got some standards.

Among other things, Marching Band forms state that if my kid starts acting like a li'l jerkface on a trip, Marching Band can call and command me to pick up my li'l jerkface.