How did you decide to become a writer?
It started with my passion for reading.

When I was seven years old, I remember being absolutely terrified by a first-season Twilight Zone episode called “Time Enough at Last.” It’s about a bank teller named Henry Bemis who’s so crazy about reading, he reads constantly: at work, during meals, while driving, I think. He stays up all night reading. It drives his wife and his boss crazy.

I had a lot of sympathy for Henry. Of course he’d want to read constantly. Who wouldn’t, when there are so many amazing novels out there? One day, Henry sneaks into the bank vault during his lunch hour to read and is knocked unconscious by a sonic boom. When he wakes up and leaves the vault, he discovers that a nuclear bomb has obliterated all of humanity. Henry wanders around his smoldering, void-of-life town, distraught, until he stumbles across the library. Sure, buildings are destroyed. Yes, every single human being on earth (other than Henry) has perished. And yet hundreds of novels – all that paper – have remained intact! Realizing he has all the time in the world to read, and no pesky wife or boss to bother him, Henry is ecstatic. Who needs human contact when he can read? Feeling triumphant, he reaches down to pick up a stack of books and – horror of all horrors – his glasses slip off his face and shatter. Suddenly the world becomes blurry. Henry cannot read a single word.

That story haunted me. It still does. At the time, I couldn’t imagine a torture worse than being surrounded by books, without the ability to read.

That’s the worst torture you could imagine? Obviously, you’ve led a very sheltered life.
I know. It’s crazy because I don’t even wear glasses. Now where was I?

Don’t know. I stopped listening.
Oh, right. You asked me how I decided to become a writer.

I did?
Yes.

Then why were you talking about some TV show I’ve never seen?
To make the point that I always knew I wanted to be a writer. There was no deciding involved. However, I was in denial for a long time. Mostly because I didn’t understand how people became writers.

How do people become writers?
I’m not sure. I can only speak for myself. My path was long and twisty and full of detours.
When I was in high school, all I ever wanted to be was a writer. I wrote a lot – short stories, essays, school newspaper articles, angst-y, brooding poetry, the first chapters of six different novels… Then I went to college and told myself that writing fiction wasn’t practical or even possible. I studied political science, and wrote for and edited the school paper, thinking I’d go into journalism or academia.

When I graduated, I realized I was more interested in fiction-writing, so I moved to New York and found a job in book publishing. My thinking was, if I couldn’t write, at least I could work with books and other writers. Working as an editorial assistant at a children’s publishing house was fun. I learned a lot about the business and process of publishing. Even better, it actually led to some writing opportunities. I wrote some very short books for very young readers based on a popular American doll. Later, I moved on to writing stories about a well-loved British bear. Getting paid to make up stories was great, but I didn’t feel like an author because I wasn’t creating my own characters. I felt like a hack, a sell out, a horrible cad. Some of my books had coupons in the middle of them. It was ugly.

Wait, who was this doll?
I can’t tell you.

What about the bear?
I can’t reveal his true identity. It would be illegal.

Was he Yogi?
No, he’s not British.

All right. If this bear had a thing for tart jam, just hit enter. The lawyers won’t be able to touch you.
Anyway, after a few years in New York, editing and writing the occasional book about someone else’s character, I still wasn’t convinced that I could actually, “be an author,” so I moved to London to get a master’s degree in Social Anthropology.

Anthropologists study human culture and society. I’ve always been interested in what informs behavior - why people do what they do, how people become who they are – that kind of thing. So anthropology made sense. However, in graduate school, it became clear that I wanted to explore those issues as a novelist, rather than as an academic.

After graduating, I moved back to New York, and officially decided to “be an author.” At first, this meant seeking out editors to find more freelance work. For a while, my career was pretty scrappy. I took whatever writing assignment I could get. Over the next few years, I ended up ghost writing for a couple of popular mystery series. I ‘novelized’ some movies. I wrote for a couple of book series based on television shows. And I also did a bit of magazine writing. In my free time, I worked on my own fiction.

After finishing my first original novel, I found an agent. She sent the novel out to various publishing houses, and everyone rejected it. I kept writing. Eventually, an editor at Simon & Schuster liked my work enough to buy FIX and PRICE OF ADMISSION.

In short, deciding to become a writer was more about admitting to myself that I had to be a writer. Or at the very least, that I had to try.

In other words you were just really bad at math and science, so you ruled out everything but being a writer?
No, that’s just a coincidence.

How long is your book?
FIX is 237 pages.

Both sides?
Yes.

Is it one of those books where Chapter One starts on page 32?
No, Chapter One starts on page one.

That’s too bad. I like those. I always feel a serious sense of accomplishment when I’ve only read twenty pages and I’m already on page fifty.
That wasn’t really a question.

Sorry. How’s this: I like those. I always feel a serious sense of accomplishment when I’ve only read twenty pages and I’m already on page fifty. Do you know what I mean?
Yes, I do know what you mean.

What’s your favorite food?
It’s a tossup between Fuji apples and chocolate covered pretzels. But who cares? You’re supposed to be asking me questions about my books, or at least about writing.

No thanks.
But that’s the whole purpose of this website.

Do you have any flash games or YouTube clips on here?
No. Right now this website is devoted to my two YA novels, FIX and PRICE OF ADMISSION. There will be updates soon, when I have more books to talk about.

But no YouTube clips?
No YouTube clips.

Okay, fine. What are your novels about?
FIX is about two sisters, Cameron and Allie Beekman, and how they deal with issues related to plastic surgery.

PRICE OF ADMISSION is about a seventeen-year-old girl who writes a screenplay about her dysfunctional family, which accidentally gets sold to her movie-producer father.

If they turned one of your books into a movie, who would play you?
I’m the author. I’m not a character in either of the books, so I don’t think there would be anybody playing me.

That sucks for you.
How about asking me questions like, “How long does it take you to write a novel?” or “Why did you write FIX?” Or even “How do you get a book published?”

Those don’t sound like questions I would ask, do they?
No, unfortunately.

How long does it take to write a novel? (See, you don’t even know me, stop pretending that you do.)
It took me about four months to write the first draft of FIX, but I thought about the issues, characters, and story for many months before I actually sat down to write that draft. For me, thinking about each story is an essential step of the writing process. I also take a lot of character notes, and create story outlines, even though I rarely stick to my outlines.

Or maybe you just like to procrastinate.
Maybe.

I thought about PRICE OF ADMISSION for a year before I started writing it. The core idea came to me in December of 2004, while I was hiking in New Zealand. I took some notes there. Then I went home and worked on some other projects. All the while, I kept coming back to the core idea of the story and the main character. Eventually, I started writing it, and I turned in the final draft in September of 2006.

And the book isn’t coming out until February 27, 2007?
That is correct.

Why does it take so long?
For book publishing – September to February is actually a fast turnaround. Often, there’s a yearlong lag between a novel’s due date and its publication. There are many steps involved. Writing, revising, copyediting, and then --

All right, all right. Do you have any cool tattoos?
No I don’t have any cool tattoos. Could you please ask me some questions that are a little bit more on topic?

Oh, so all of a sudden you’re the boss of me?
You’re a fictional character that I created to ask me questions, so my readers could learn more about me and my books.

I’m a fictional character?
Yes.

Then what is my name?
Um, you don’t have a name.

How can I be a fictional character if I don’t have a name?
Okay, your name is Zoey.

Oh, Zoey, that’s real original. I guess Apple and Lourdes were already taken. Let me guess, Salinger? What a cliché.
I just picked a name. You can call yourself whatever you want to. And anyways, Salinger spelled it Zooey.

Speaking of J. D. Salinger, I bet he has a totally cool website.
I’ll bet he does. Why don’t you go and look for it now?