Deborah Wiles

There's always something good to come out of disappointment: Comfort.

A story shared back and forth is just about the most perfect symbiotic gift. It's a bit like love. No, it's a lot like love.

So often, we don't realize that the very moments in which we live become our history, our story.

I always say that I take my life and turn it into story, and I certainly did that with 'Countdown'.

It's an extension of what I do also as part of making my living - I go into schools and work with kids on writing, and I do assembly programs often. Each one is different because each school has different requirements.

As a children's author, you get to advocate for reading and writing in general, in a way an adult author might not be able to. It's a really interesting dance we do to get literature into the hands of young people and to help them to become literate and become readers; we want them to grow up reading and continue to do so when they're adults.