Michael McMillian Quotes

For English assignments I was constantly coming up with these strange adventure stories... But I actually wanted to be an artist, or maybe work in the comic book industry.

We're writing a book together. She just finished one. Did you read it? Among the Porcupines?

Every day I run into people who don't know what I do. And even after I explain it they still don't know what I do. So now I can just say, 'Pick up the Locas book!' And that tells them all.

Picture books are the distillation of an idea, and you have to use just the right words. I love that, and I try to use a lot of action verbs.

My agent will say, 'Well, it's another graphic novel.' I don't care. It's better writing than anything else that's out there. The characters are much better.

The key thing if you're a writer is to visualize the scene and convey it to the penciller and turn the penciller loose.

We always wanted to do a children's book of some form or another.

I think I've written 40 books, and none of them have been heavy on action. I'm an introspective person.

I want to work on the 'True Blood' comic for as long as they'll let me.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

I look for the character to be something interesting, the script to have a good story and be original, and a director that I admire.

At first, I see pictures of a story in my mind. Then creating the story comes from asking questions of myself. I guess you might call it the 'what if - what then' approach to writing and illustration.

My first novel, 'Sacrifice,' was set on the Shetland Islands.

The most fun I ever have is sitting in with Rick writing, and we laugh at our own jokes.

I'm such a huge fan of fan fiction, to me it's a great way for readers to become writers. It's like putting the training wheels on for writing.

People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.

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!

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then... it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.

If I ever write a book, it will be called 'Bottle Blonde.'

In 'Me Before You,' the two characters popped into my head fully formed, which is really strange and unusual. Other books, I sit on them for two or three months. I have a whole routine: I buy a nice book; I hand-write all their characteristics. I put them through little tests just to see how they would react to things.

You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.

When a group of ultra-opinionated, uber-creative romance authors get together, I'm sure you guys can imagine how fast the ideas start flying!

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

Jigsaw Lady is the working title of a science fiction novel I've had in my head for darn near 15 years. I think I'll start work on it next year (in all my spare time) but I'd like to get it finished some day.

Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.