Ann Hood

I have a fondness for writing about precocious, troubled teenagers, who are alienating, but kind of endearing. It's from remembering so clearly that time in my own life. I experienced myself as more dramatically troubled than I was, but I just remember how it felt.

I write so that people will read what I write. I don't want to write a book that a thousand people read, or just privileged people read. I want to write a book whose emotional truth people can understand. For me, that's what it's about.

In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family - my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.

God does give us more than we can bear sometimes.

As someone who has lived the nightmare of losing a child, I know that the enormous hole left behind remains forever.

When I did get married and then had children, it was Beatles' songs I sang to them at night. As one of the youngest of 24 cousins, I had never held an infant or baby-sat. I didn't know any lullabies, so I sang Sam and Grace to sleep with 'I Will' and 'P.S. I Love You.'

My cousins and I used to play Beatle wives. We all wanted to be married to Paul, but John was O.K. too. None of us wanted Ringo. Or even worse, George.

Babies make you do things for them. They get you up and they get you moving.

Everyone has read about or knows someone who has gone through fertility treatments. It is an emotional nightmare, fueled by false hope and the promise of a treatment that will work.

After 9/11, new security measures not only added longer lines and earlier check-ins, but took away our privilege of carrying knitting needles or our favorite moisturizer on board with us. Although we want to be safe when we fly, in some ways it all just adds to the misery of our experience.

This was 1978, when flying was still an occasion, a special grand event that took planning and care. I worked as a TWA flight attendant then. I stood in my Ralph Lauren uniform at the boarding door and smiled at the passengers through lips coated with lipstick that perfectly matched the stripe on my jacket. Mostly, the passengers smiled back.

When we deal with death, the pupils will always be fixed and dilated, which indicates that there is no longer brain activity or response.

Dead bodies do get a grayish blue/purple hue because blood pools in the capillaries and the body starts to decompose. It's not smurf blue, but it's not a pleasant shade.

I am thrilled to write 'The Treasure Chest,' and to bring to life not only the childhoods of famous people from history, but also the characters of Maisie and Felix, who I hope you will fall in love with just as I have!

When I was seven years old, I fell in love with a series published by Bobbs-Merrill called 'The Childhood of Famous Americans.' In it, historical figures like Clara Barton, Nancy Hanks, Elias Howe, Patrick Henry, and dozens more came to life for me as children.

I often feel that I have a split personality. I love more than anything to be in my study writing, but when it's time to do a book tour, I love that extroverted part, too - talking to people, reading, traveling, going out into the world.

Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.

There are so many cruel decisions parents have to make when their child dies. The funeral director requested a sheet for the coffin, and I sent the cozy flannel one, pale blue with happy snowmen, that had just been put away with the winter linens.

I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner.