Camille Perri

“My advice to anyone with writerly ambitions and a demanding day job is to set aside a little piece of time, even an hour a week if that's all you can manage, and make it yours. This is your writing hour. Even if you use it up by staring at a blank screen and daydreaming, so what?”

“I wanted to write a book about two women falling in love that wasn't hinged on tragedy or that involved some horrible identity-based misfortune. I wanted to write a pretty standard romantic comedy where nobody dies, nobody gets hurt, nobody gets sick.”

“I've trained myself to write the first two or three hours I'm awake simply by doing it every day. If life stuff interferes with this sacred time, I get very cranky.”

“'When Katie Met Cassidy' is a romantic comedy about two very different women who find themselves uncontrollably drawn to one another. Issues of gender and sexuality play their part in the novel, but first and foremost, it's a fun, fast-paced love story.”

“People do judge books by their covers, and the magazine editors deciding whether to include your book on their pages are working in a visual medium. So if you're less than thrilled by the cover your publisher proposes, don't be afraid to ask for an alternate version. Odds are that they want you to be happy with the final product, anyway.”

“When I was coming to terms with my sexuality, I often felt like I needed to seek out sanctuary outside of my house, and the library was the first place I went. It was a place that I could go and seek out information and look for answers to questions that maybe I was too afraid to ask another person.”

“We're forfeiting our power if we succumb to apathy.”

“John Austin, author of 'Cubicle Warfare,' has outdone himself with 'Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction,' a fully illustrated step-by-step guide to constructing thirty-five pocket-sized war machines, including a Clothespin Shooter, a Hanger Slingshot, a Paper-Clip Trebuchet, and Shoelace Darts.”

“Keeping a journal is the number-one best way to develop your written voice.”

“I was the assistant to the editor-in-chief of 'Esquire Magazine.' And my experience as an assistant was really best case scenario. My boss was absolutely the greatest boss I could have asked for. But I think there's something universal about being an assistant, regardless of whether or not your boss is the greatest or a complete terror.”

“Our country is failing to live up to its promise of opportunity and fairness. It used to be true that if you went to college and you worked hard, you could count on having a decent middle-class life - but that's just not true anymore. Economic and political changes that have occurred over the past three decades have made the middle-class American dream for today's twenty- and thirtysomethings far less possible than it was for their parents' generation. It's not that we're lazy, that we have no work ethic, or that we have outrageous spending habits. It's that we've been screwed.”

“A lot of queer stories revolve around tragedy.”

“When I knew I wanted to write a novel that would be a twist on a conventional romantic comedy, I re-watched 'When Harry Met Sally,' as well as the other two films in the indomitable Ephron trifecta - 'Sleepless in Seattle' and 'You've Got Mail.'”

“I'm a big fan of rituals in general because I'm a firm believer in muscle memory.”

“I certainly firsthand know and love people who didn't fall in love with a woman or didn't even realize they were attracted to women until much later in life, and I'm sure that's true for many men who find themselves attracted to men as well. It doesn't always happen in adolescence. And that experience is completely valid and OK.”

“Apparently, blaming oneself for debilitating student debt is common.”

“Remember that input is as important as output. Take in something for inspiration, to relight the fire inside you, and ideas on how to fix whatever isn't working in your writing will usually follow.”

“You know that secret novel you've been working on? The one that's really about you and your friends and your psycho ex-girlfriend? The one that, if discovered, would socially annihilate you for eternity? Yeah, go ahead and burn it.”

“The fact that there are still mainstream print media outlets willing to devote precious pages to book coverage at all is a triumph we should all be celebrating.”

“I've always been a big fan of political and social satire.”