But each time I seemed to be climbing into a roller coaster and finding myself coming through the downhill run with that sort of dazed feeling that we all know.
To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.
For me, growing up felt like a roller coaster ride at times, but looking back, I don't think that it was such a bad thing. It was all part of the excitement of being young.
Most of my fans know I love video games. I say it in every interview, so they know. But one thing that I like doing is skateboarding, I like jet skiing, skydiving. It's like a huge roller coaster ride. Like forty seconds of free-falling. That's some of the stuff I love, daredevil stuff. I like horseback riding.
I was very fortunate to be raised with an 'if not you, then who?' mentality, and I count my blessings every day to have the support of my family and especially my wife. She's got a front-row seat on the roller coaster.
My girlfriend tells me if I'm doing a movie I'm a roller coaster of emotions all the time, but on 'Boardwalk,' because I've done it for so long and I'm so in tune with the character, she says I'm pretty happy most of the time.
The truth is that entrepreneurship is more like a roller coaster ride than a cruise.
The 'science' behind hormone replacement therapy has put women on a medically engineered, press-fueled, big pharma funded roller coaster ride.
Giving up is conceding that things will never get better, and that is just not true. Ups and downs are a constant in life, and I've been belted into that roller coaster a thousand times.
In an amusement park, you can go on a roller coaster that carries you up and down, or you can go on another kind of ride that whirls you around in a circle. Similarly, there are different sorts of entertaining experiences in the theater.
The thing about grief is that it's a roller coaster - it's up, it's down. The emotions sometimes take over.
Barack Obama's historic 2008 presidential campaign touched on all the themes I have covered throughout my career and all of the layers of meaning that run through black politics. Ambition. Aspiration. Fear. Folly. It was all on display as Obama boarded the roller coaster that ultimately led to the White House.
