“I've had a love affair with the desert ever since I can remember. No m...” — Rae Carson Quote

I've had a love affair with the desert ever since I can remember. No matter what I wrote - contemporary romance, spy thriller, high fantasy - it was going to have a desert in it.

I do confess to being the exasperated, bossy, know-it-all, overachieving big sister.

The common thread in all my projects is 'girls being awesome.' Can we make that a genre?

I grew up in a cloistered, conservative culture that adhered to strict gender roles. So it's easy to understand why the 'girl dressed as a boy' trope resonated so much. In a world that didn't want to give people like me adventures or significance, books with cross-dressing girls were treasures.

What the Shin Bet did in the Bus 300 affair is no less than declaring a revolt. They took the methods of manipulation, disinformation, threats, blackmail, etc. and instead of using them against the enemy, they used these tactics against their own side.

Canada was one of the first countries that took an interest in my career. Apart from a freak hit I had in South America, Canadians took my 'Spanish Train' album to heart and have stuck with me ever since. They've been very loyal, and it's been a long and rewarding affair.

President Karzai's regime is not perfect. There are problems of improving governance. But you cannot transform Afghanistan overnight. It is going to be a long-term affair.

I had an affair, and it just blew up. People were messaging me paragraphs of just like vicious, like, so visceral, like, hatred.