It's been quite a roller coaster ride but I've grown and learned a lot about myself. The greatest thing is being able to interact with fans and touch people's lives... for that I give thanks.

You need to know what makes artists tick. Having been through the process myself as a musician since I was an early teen gave me an advantage - understanding them from their point of view because it's about them it's not about you - it's their vision and what they're capable of achieving and you're the conduit.

I decided that if I were to write a teen series I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.

I saw myself as an outsider as a teen. I was home-schooled and got my G.E.D. when I was 16 I wasn't interested in high school at all and figured that college might be more entertaining.

When I was a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom for hours bouffanting my hair like Patty Duke and trying to recreate Barbra Streisand's flawless eyeliner only to comb it all out and wash it all off before stepping out into the world a butchish bisexual teen.

At the age of 16 I was already dreaming of having a baby because I felt myself to be an adult but my mum forbid it. Right now I feel like a teenager and I want to have fun for one or two more years before starting a family.

My problem is that I like technology but I always have to ask myself 'Now wait a minute will I actually have any use for this?'

I've been so entwined with technology since I was about 15 recording myself and multitracking and producing things on my own.

I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk not only in technology and ecology but in life and employment too.

Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.

My major was Fine Arts and Education thinking I would become an Art Teacher. I couldn't visualize myself as an art teacher thinking how it wouldn't work.

I want to clear up a few myths about myself. People have written that I was a kindergarten teacher and a former Miss Texas and neither is true.

I count myself well educated for the admirable woman at the head of the school which I attended from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half was a born teacher in advance of her own times.

As a teacher myself I've been in situations where parents come at you and sometimes parents come across like the teacher doesn't want the best for their kid and it can be really really hurtful.

When I was writing 'The Abstinence Teacher ' I really tried to immerse myself in contemporary American evangelical culture.

People can look to me as a teacher but I consider myself a student of hip-hop.

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'