I Live In My Own Little World.

I've Written A Lot Of Novels For Teens And Tweens ... But I'd Never Really Tackled The North Carolina Side Of Me. And It's So Strong And So Important, And Yet I Hadn't Acknowledged It. And So One Of The Things I Wanted To Do In "shine" Is Take That On.

Other People Have Suggested That I Write About Teens Because I'm Perpetually Stuck In That Stage Of My Own Development. That Could Very Well Be True. I Would Throw Out That Teens And Tweens Are Just Absolutely Fabulous And The Most Interesting People On The Planet. And It Is A Time Of High Drama, And Everything Matters.

If She Did See, I Hoped She' Be Amazed. Amazed And Thankful, Because Without Even Asking, She'd Received A Genuine Autograph From A Genuine Girl From Atlanta. Not Just Any Girl, But A Girl Who Was, Frankly, A Pretty Big Deal. A Girl Who Was Me.

It's Unfair How The Kids Who Are Starving For Attention Tended To Be So Annoying That People Had No Inclination To Give It To Them.

I Did A Lot Of Research On A Couple Different Things. One Was, How Do People Handle Hating Themselves And Hating Others? And Hatred Is A Secondary Emotion, I Think; It Always Springs From Something Else ... Usually Fear, That's Probably What It Is. So I Looked A Lot At That.