It's interesting how people are sensitive to language and how it works.

As a journalist, I interviewed people, and you begin to feel different rhythms in speech, and you can use those things to help carve out a character.

If readers tell you that stretches of dialogue or narrative were too long, that they couldn't tell who was talking, that's something that can be fixed.

Before the Internet became so powerful, I toured extensively. With the rise of the Internet, touring apparently has become less important.

When you're writing two books a year, you really need some time off and don't want to use that down time for touring. I do like talking with readers, though; they can tell you important stuff.

I was a newspaper editor in the Army, and I know something about the Army PR culture.

My kids, who are grown now and living in L.A., are used to me packing up and taking off to somewhere weird.

I've always thought of myself as a journalist; that was what I did.

Combat stress isn't the only problem for soldiers isolated in Iraq - there are family issues, re-integration issues when soldiers go home on leave, loneliness.

I'm not saying that photographers are dumber than other people, but they are the folks who walk around with brilliant white lights in nighttime riots.