This is a new feature I'm trying out. When I get questions — about anything — I'm going to try to answer them on Wednesday. :)

So here's this week's question from a fan:

At what point did you KNOW this was what you absolutely HAD to do?

Honestly speaking, I've never felt like this is what I absolutely had to do. Rather, it was more like this is what I kept coming back to because when I'm not writing I miss it.

When I graduated from college, I honestly thought I'd do the corporate America thing, make good money and retire. And the pay and perks were fabulous for a fresh-out-of-college kid in her early twenties. But it wasn't right for me. I didn't like having to lay people off, for one thing, because it wasn’t laying off some high school kid doing a summer job. We're talking about hundreds of people in their mid- to late thirties and forties with children and mortgages to pay for. I understand the economic imperatives behind work like that, but that didn’t make it any easier to do. After a couple of years, I felt like my soul was shrivelling up.

And even when I wasn't part of the team that laid off people, I just never felt like I was making any real difference or making things better. So I quit after three years to become a writer. (My mother was flabbergasted by this decision and — in typical tiger-mom style — said, “You're too smart to be a writer!”)

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to make as much money as I would have if I'd stayed at my job and did the whole career track and whatnot. But I'm not hurting anybody — nobody's gotten fired because of my writing. And getting notes from readers who tell me my writing gave them enjoyment — just plain made them feel good — is more or less priceless. And you know what? That's what I want from my work. I want people to feel good as a result of it. So that's why I keep coming back to writing because that's how I can do that.

If have any questions about me, my writing, books, characters or anything else, feel free to drop me a line by leaving me a comment, using the contact form or via Facebook or Twitter. I reserve the right not to answer if the topic happens to be politics or religion. But anything else is more or less fair game. Thanks! :)