I always had a fascination with twins.

I always loved reading. Growing up, my favorite book was 'A Child's Garden of Verses,' by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I don't do rewrites. I put all the pages in a pile next to the typewriter.

I like to play poker. I have a nice poker group that's been going on for years.

Since I was a small child, I was always writing either poems or plays... plays in which I had the starring part.

The same way that some people can play the piano, I can do plots! They just come!

I get some of my ideas from watching my three daughters, but most of them come from my own memories of growing up. I can remember how romantic I was, not just about love, but romance in the classic sense - the romantic ideals: of honor and truth, of loyalty, sacrifice and fairness. Those were the elements that made a story satisfying to me.

I know you think that when you're 35, 45, 55, you'll be different. But I'm going to let you in on a bit of a secret. You're going to look different, and your life is going to be different, but in your head you'll always be that 16-year-old girl.

I love 'Sweet Valley,' but I love it from a different angle. There are people for whom it is their adolescence. They own it, in a way that even I don't. I've come to respect the project more because of the response than I've had. It's more important than I realized it was. I didn't understand the breadth and depth of it. now I'm beginning to more.

No matter when you were born or where, puberty is the same. It's the same for your parents as it is for you - what's happening in your body dictates everything.

When I first thought of the idea for 'Sweet Valley High,' I loved the idea of high school as microcosm of the real world. And what I really liked was how it moved things on from 'Sleeping Beauty'-esque romance novels where the girl had to wait for the hero. This would be girl-driven, very different, I decided - and indeed it is.