I just got a really nice email from someone who compared Mad Skills to a cross between Flowers for Algernon and La Femme Nikita. Since I love both those things, that's about as high praise as it gets. This is what I hope for with anything I write, that people will tune into my psycho wavelength and share my obsessions.

Writing is both a very isolating and very intimate activity. It's a strange and wonderful thing to realize that real people are reading your work, which in a sense means that they're reading your thoughts. Sometimes that can be depressing, if people don't like what you write, or if you feel they've misunderstood it. We all want to be loved. But being loved is not as important as being truthful with your reader. Books should be personal; no matter how far-fetched the subject matter, they should strongly express the concerns of the author. This is just my opinion, based on what I like to read. Any story is better with a touch of personal idiosyncrasy--otherwise, it's just empty hackwork. This is true of movies and TV shows as well as books. In fact, it's true of everything.