Here's you Friday Winter Blog Blast Tour schedule:

Loree Griffin Burns at Chasing Ray: "At some point during that interview I asked him how many containers fall off of cargo ships each year, and his answer shocked me: between one thousand and ten thousand. Ten thousand! That was the moment I began to wonder how much trash was actually in the ocean, and the direction of my research changed dramatically."

Lily Archer at The Ya Ya Yas: "Even though being forced to deal with a (bad) step-parent is really, really hard (and ideally none of us would have to go through it), it is kind of an incredible learning experience. You will be way smarter and more mature and able to deal with crazy people than your friends with the super-functional-happy married parents."

Rick Riordan at Jen Robinson's Book Page: "I was a very reluctant reader until I hit middle school. I remember other kids being excited about reading incentive programs in elementary school, like 'read twenty books and get a gold sticker!' That just left me cold. I liked comic books and looking at photos in nonfiction books, but the idea of reading a novel was just too daunting. I would get bored easily. Nothing grabbed me. In middle school, I discovered the Lord of the Rings, and that was the first thing that I read for pleasure, but I couldn't find anything else as good."

Gabrielle Zevin at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: "The question I was asking was, how do you live in the world when it’s filled with so much loss? So, when people ask me why I chose to write about the afterlife, I tell them, the reason we tell stories about the next life is because we’re trying to make sense of this one."

Dia Calhoun at lectitans: "All I can say is I think that the more intensely personal and particular you become in your writing, the more universal you become. The universal is found through the particular. Fantasy, because it so often speaks through archetypes, shoots to the heart of what is universal. Take dealing with fear, for example. Fantasy can conjure up the vast and powerful darkness lurking in all of us through such particulars as magic objects, evil wizards, dread powers, and horrible landscapes. All of these are doorways to the subconscious mind where the deepest fear--and the deepest understanding--lurks. Fantasy brings the inner world out into the light, where we can then examine it with understanding and compassion, and then gain new insight into ourselves and our world."

Shannon Hale at Miss Erin: "Acting is all about character creation. I think it was wonderful preparation. But it takes so much time and energy, auditions are nightmares, and I just don’t have a lifestyle compatible to theater hours anymore."

Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple at Shaken & Stirred: "Being a working musician for twenty years has made everything about writing easier. A literary agent I knew who was also in a punk band, once said, 'Why do authors complain about bad reviews? When I get a bad review it's in the form of a beer bottle thrown at my head.'"

Alan Gratz at Interactive Reader: "That said, (ahem) the voice I developed for Horatio was a deliberate homage to noir fiction, particularly Raymond Chandler. I know teenagers don’t really talk like that and act like that. My intention was never to write an “authentic� teenage voice for Horatio. Horatio talks and acts like I wished I had when I was a teen. He always has the right snarky comment at the right time, and he always knows what to do when the blank verse hits the fan. In my defense I called Something Rotten “aspirational fiction,� because we all aspire to be that cool, even though we know it’s impossible. Horatio is as impossible as Philip Marlowe, or James Bond, or Veronica Mars. Could any teen ever be as cool and smart and confident as Veronica Mars? We only wish."

Lisa Yee at Hip Writer Mama: "I learned that the emotions boys have are not all that different than girls’-- it’s just that the way they communicate is different. Boys tend to hold things in. Girls talk them out. Of course that all changes when we become adults . . . NOT!!!!"