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The more we change, the more we stay the same! As a child, I loved Hello Kitty and spent hours drawing Japanese-style characters of my own imagination. Today, I do pretty much the same thing for a living... Perigee has just released Cute Yummy Time, my book about making adorable food that features my Scottish Fold cat, Basil Farrow.

I created an adventure story to accompany the 70 recipes, and illustrated every page with cutie characters. Where did I draw inspiration? From my childhood doodles of puppies and chicks.

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Yesterday, I said one of the FAQs writers hear is "Where do you get your ideas?"  But this is actually a softball question lobbed by people who already like you.  The trickiest question is "Oh, yeah, you're a writer?  What do you write?"

When your interrogator has one hand propped on hip, you know you're in for good times.

"Books" is the safe and obvious answer.  People think you're being facetious, but honestly, that's the part that still delights me most: I wrote a book!  With pages and a cover and stuff!  Admittedly, though, it's not a complete and satisfying answer and I haven't been able to get away with it yet.

Romance is the most fun answer, because seven times out of ten, someone will be blushing by the time the second question rolls around.  As long as you don't mind defending the value of stories where love elevates the spirit (and we need to defend this?  still?  really?) saying "I write romance" can be the start of an-ahem-invigorating discussion among bookish types.  But romance has become such a diverse genre-ranging from erotica to inspirational, historicals to futuristics--that too is not enough of an answer anymore.