KRISTIN GORE

I can't look at people's wrists. Something about the veins makes me weak. My siblings used to torture me with that because they knew it was the thing I couldn't handle. They would stick their wrists in my face.

You think about D.C. as a boring stuffy place. That's kind of its image. But if you grow up in that, you see all these energetic, fun people and crazy stuff that happens behind the scenes that no one knows about.

It's all discipline and schedule for me. I mean, it's very easy to get distracted by the real world and things that intrude constantly, and it takes dedication to live totally in your head and be tuned out.

In actuality, 'Sammy's House' can and should be read as an entirely fictional comedy set in a fascinating political world.

I didn't realize I wanted to write about D.C. until after 2000. Even though I was a comedy writer, I stayed away from that subject on purpose. It took attaining some distance and perspective.

There's this perception of D.C. as a boring town run by old white men, but in reality, there are incredibly young people in charge of really important things.

'Jitterbug Perfume' is one of my favorite books.

I like my leaders smart and serious. I don't need a stand-up comic.

Take it from me: I really love making things up, which is why I write fiction for a living.

In my free time, I'd written 'Sammy's Hill' - it had started out as a play. I just did it for myself.

From age 7 on, I wanted to be a writer.

I make things up for a living. It would be pretty boring to just fictionalize real people.

I consciously decided to make both 'Sammy's Hill' and 'Sammy's House' more of a warm satire and not go the route of writing a dark and bitter book about D.C.

I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.

When I read books, I actually really love imagining whomever I want to in the character's role. I get such vivid pictures on my own that that is a big part of the experience for me.

After writing for TV for a while, I got sort of fed up with all of the cancellations and the volatility in that industry. Also, you're always writing for someone else's character and story, and I really wanted to develop my own.

I don't really go into labels or an in-depth discussion of different value systems because for me, it's sort of the truth of the situation in D.C. Certainly, in my fictional depiction of it, there are decent, shameless people on both sides at every level.

I can go days without meaningful human interaction.

I was one of those dorky kids who'd wanted to go to Harvard since the fifth grade.

Any writing teacher tells you to write what you know, and for better or for worse, Washington is a world I know well.

I love the satire and skewering of comedy writing.

I was really nerdy. Compared with my sisters, I often felt like a boring person because I lived so much in my head and in books.

Whenever Congress was in session, we were in Washington. So four months out of the year we were in Tennessee and the rest of the time in Arlington, which is where my mom grew up. Then, of course, in 1992 we moved into the vice president's house in D.C. I was 15 then.

My dad has a dry, deadpan sense of humor, and my mom has an unexpected, wacky take on things. They really encouraged laughing at ourselves and the weirdness of situations that come up growing up in politics.

The wrists, the Achilles' tendons, and the neck are some of the weakest points of the human body, so a lot of people have phobias about those things. I can't deal with the undersides of wrists.