I fell in love with vampires in the 1980's when I read Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice. The language, the romanticism, the concept of an entire vampire society who lived for centuries and were cursed with having to kill to live was enthralling. The sexiness of Rice's vampires also made them irresistible. What red-blooded American fan of paranormal romance doesn't fantasize about being ravished by Lestat?

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I began reviewing for BookBrowse at almost the exact moment that I began writing my book, The Mark Inside. There's no question that growing my own book affected how I read others' finished ones. I found myself immediately, instantly, irrevocably generous. I don't mean that I liked everything I read. Far from it. I mean that I found myself unwilling to dismiss anything without at least trying to understand why the author had designed it that way. In other words, everything suddenly seemed deeply intentional and well-meant, if not always well-executed.

As soon as I handed my manuscript over to the publisher and began the long wait until publication, I began to dread the reviews. I knew that the first negative comment had the potential to send me into the depths of misery, even if I knew it was unfair. Sometimes the rational mind can dismiss a barb but the emotional mind cannot. How could I arm myself against the sharp words of reviewers and critics?

The solution to the problem was office supplies. As it so often is.

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Show me a voracious reader and I will show you someone who I daresay had a lonely, miserable and isolated childhood -- at least, I did.

As a child, I read to escape, to find friends, to travel to distant parts of the world, and to try to make sense of a world that I found pretty baffling. I was the type of girl who read cereal boxes, the tags on mattress covers, and the comics in Hubba Bubba gum.

I never enjoyed history in school - too many battles, boring old politicians and stuffy monarchs. But now, as an historical novelist, I find social history, the day to day gritty details of how people kept warm, cooked, had babies, went to the bathroom and had sex, riveting.

My reading has changed since I started writing full time. I used to be a 'drive by reader', pick up a book, read a chapter, finish it if I enjoyed it, and toss it aside if I didn't. I read everything - thrillers, mysteries, historicals and literary fiction.

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Flood water smells old. It smells like something decaying, like something that has been left out for too long, like a mix of oil and compost and mold. Flood silt is heavy. It sticks to everything it touches. A pair of blue jeans covered in it is almost too hard to carry. I know these things. I know what it feels like to walk down a block lined with more appliances than trees and more garbage than grass. Facing clean-up and recovery is lonely--deep in the bones lonely--and while part of that loss of control means surrendering to the awful thing that has happened, another part means accepting help--from friends but also from strangers. And that's why I also know what it feels like to have a stranger walk up my front porch steps, ask if she can take the pile of muddy, wet laundry from my front yard and wash it for me--and to not know what to say--and to finally say yes--and to have my life change forever because of that one word.

Early this fall, Tropical Storm Irene swept through my home state of Vermont, my town, my street and my home--and all of a sudden I was inside Marble Boys, my middle-grade novel about Hurricane Katrina, in a way I had never, ever, ever imagined.

I began to write Marble Boys in September 2005. The story was born out my son Luc's question, "Who exactly is going to get my blue jeans?" as we dropped off a bag of food and clothing for the Hurricane Katrina Relief Drive at the Vermont State Police Barracks. I didn't know how, exactly, to answer his question. I didn't know who would get his blue jeans. But it--or he--stayed with me. This mystery person. Who would he be? Would he be Luc's age? Would he love to skateboard too?  Play the trombone?  Be afraid of making telephone calls? And so I began to imagine: What if a boy in Vermont named Henry donated a pair of his blue jeans to the relief effort in New Orleans and a boy named Zavion got them? And what if Henry put his lucky marble--which he had just deemed unlucky because of his own terrible tragedy--into a pocket of those pants?  And what if Zavion found the marble and wondered who had given him this magical gift?

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With the recent release of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" I've been thinking about some of my favorite fictional characters. Because, naturally...or not, Lisbeth Salander ranks right up there as one of my favorite female fictional characters of all time. I know that Stieg Larsson's gritty series with its share of graphically violent content doesn't suit everyone's taste. Furthermore I imagine the movie image of the dark, pierced and spiky-haired Swede might leave many folks cold, wondering what there is about her that could possibly appeal to anyone. And yet, several months after I finished reading Larsson's trilogy this married, advanced-age mother of two grown men still sometimes wonders what Lisbeth might be up to.

Yes. That's what I do. When I befriend a fictional character in a book we become bff's [Best Friends Forever]. For instance I can't recall how many years ago I read Nabokov's "Lolita" but to this day during the occasional idle moment I wonder what my old buddy Humbert Humbert is up to. Yes. I have to admit that a true rat bastard like Humbert is an odd pick as a favorite character, much less as a friend. After all, who could like a pedophile? Truth? Nobody. And maybe, in this case, friend is the wrong word. I think ours -- Humbert's and mine -- is more a student/master relationship. See, he's a terrific liar. Okay, he's a filthy, scum-of-the-earth pedophile. But he couldn't be such a scumbag if he wasn't a master of prevarication. From page one Humbert grabs and holds my attention with the utter abandon with which he lies to me. And to himself. There are times when he has both of us temporarily convinced that he's not as big a bastard as we thought.

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I learned to read when I was four years old and books have been a very important part of my life ever since. There were plenty of them around. My parents bought many books - cheap editions of classics available in regular bookstores, pre-war editions of books one could only get at second-hand bookstores and flea markets. There were libraries, too, but more popular titles were hard to get and there were no holds, unless a librarian took pity on me and helped me secure what I craved.

Why did I read so much? Because books told fascinating stories and because life outside books was scary and restricted. In the Poland of my childhood, the 50s were still post-war years, with ruins lining up the streets. My parents did not like to let me play outdoors without supervision. Books were a safe passion.

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Recently, I attended a genocide conference that included a film called Beyond the Deadly Pit, produced and directed by Rwandan genocide survivor Gilbert Ndahayo. It documents confronting his father's killer during gacaca, the traditional court used to try "lesser" perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Ndahayo said, "If one wants to be healed from the sickness, he must talk about it to the world. For 12 years, I lived with the remains of about 200 unpeaceful dead in my parents' backyard." I found the film so profoundly moving that I could not rise from my chair. Even now, writing this, I cannot prevent the tears. During the post-film q&a, I asked Ndahayo if making the film had facilitated healing. He said simply, "No."

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The picture book market is in the doldrums.  Publishers report that sales are flat and disappointed booksellers must box up the brightly colored, lavishly illustrated volumes - unopened, unread, and most dispiriting of all, unloved - and send them back to the warehouses from whence they came.

And as if this news weren't bad enough, one of the chief reasons cited for the downturn is even more discouraging. It seems that parents - the ones who actually plunk down the money for these books - are a major factor in the picture book's current decline.   Parents have started urging first graders and even kindergarteners to leave picture books behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books.   Why?  Because with the pressures of increasingly rigorous standardized testing looming on the horizon, parents are eager - some might even say desperate - for their children to get a leg up on the academic ladder.  And so, the pretty pictures and lilting rhythms get pushed aside for words, words and more words.

Now don't get me wrong.  I love words.  In fact, I have made a life's work out of writing them, both for children and adults.  But as both reader and writer, I find the elevation of the chapter book at the expense of the poor, maligned picture book an alarming trend. And I pity the children whose benighted parents are so quick to jump on this educational bandwagon.

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When I was a kid I brought home a paperback book that my parents didn't think I should read. Mind you, this was during an era when our neighborhood drugstore's book racks never sported anything but the most innocuous (by today's standards) sorts of pulp fiction, from detective stories to romance novels to true crime. So you can be assured that my selection was about as tame as, say, a Disney animated movie. But it had a lurid cover photo and a rather suggestive title, suggestive, at least, to my 12-year-old sensibilities. Also to my mom because when she spotted it on my nightstand she freaked. She asked my dad to speak to me about it and confiscate the book.

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I love books. There's nothing like the experience of cracking open a brand new book and spending a lazy Saturday reading all day. My favorite places to spend an afternoon are the library or a bookstore. I am that person at the flea market digging through a bin of old books, looking to purchase a piece of history. I have books from my childhood and my mother's childhood that I enjoy sharing with my children. I hope to pass on my love of reading, and these books, to my grandchildren.

Recently, I discovered an organization called "Permanence Matters". I was surprised to learn that many of the hardcover books that I've bought recently will likely not be around for me to pass to my grandchildren. It seems that in an attempt to save money, some publishers are printing hardcovers on low quality "groundwood" paper. In fact, according to Permanence Matters, more than half of the books on the New York Times bestseller list are now printed on this inferior paper instead of what is known as "freesheet" or "permanent" paper. To clarify, the issue of permanent versus groundwood paper is separate from discussions about acid-free paper (virtually all books are printed on acid-free paper these days anyway so it's not an issue anyway). Groundwood paper is made by a mechanical grinding process which leaves components such as lignin in the paper. Lignin is what causes the paper used in mass market paperbacks and newspapers to go yellow and brittle after a few years; the paper also tears more easily because the fibers are shorter.

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