I grew up in Seattle, which I think explains a lot. It's pretty hard to have a sunny disposition when you're constantly living under a dark cloud. As a child, I realized that if I just never went outside, I wouldn't get rained on, and I don't mean that metaphorically, even though I wish I did. I really don't go outside. 
Miraculously I have written two novels. The first one, We Are All Fine Here, was really good. My second book just came out from St. Martin's Griffin, and it's even better. It's called Gone to the Dogs, a title that wasn't my idea, but what are you going to do? If I were the type of person to go outside, I just might consider getting on an airplane and flying to New York to tell those people at St. Martin's what I think about that title. But I don't fly either, so it would be a total waste of energy to force myself out of my house only to drive to an airport and not get on a plane.
Are you still reading this? If so, you are probably my type of person. Come on over sometime and we can watch Law and Order together. It's on all the time.
On your nightstand now:
Does this mean literally what is on my nightstand now or do you mean what am I reading at this moment? At this moment, I am carrying around a copy of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which I plan on reading at some point in the near future, probably during commercials when I really should be using the time to write. I keep clothes on my nightstand.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I didn't read when I was a child. I watched TV. My favorite shows were Ed Sullivan, the Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible, Lost in Space, Bonanza and Star Trek. Also the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family. And that show with Bobby Sherman as the stuttering youngest brother. On weekends, I liked to watch Tarzan movies. Those were the glory days of television. Billy Mumy, if by any chance you are reading this, I still have a crush on you.
Top five authors:
If you were to ask me this same question tomorrow, I might give you an entirely different list. But for today, I'll say: Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Nick Hornby, Mark Salzman, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Can I have a number six? Jonathan Evison.)
Book you're an evangelist for:
I've told a million people to read She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan, which is a memoir about a man who becomes a woman. I like transgender stories. I'm really fascinated by the idea of all humans being on all sorts of continuums, including a gender one. She's Not There is a really brave book.
Book you've faked reading:
I'm a terrible liar, so I'm pretty upfront about the books I haven't read. I do, however, fake my hair color. And I wear contacts. And I once had braces on my teeth and a few sessions of electrolysis. I'm very lucky to have been born in modern times or else I would have been very unattractive.
Book that changed your life:
Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems by Richard Ferber.
Favorite line from a book:
I wish I were the type of writer who kept neat little journals with all of my favorite lines from books written in them. But I'm not. So I'm going to have to go seek out a good line. Okay, I have just retrieved An Underachiever's Diary, a novel by Benjamin Anastas, from my shelf and opened it to this great line: "If the underachiever were a mixed drink, he would be a dry martini, one part obscurity (vermouth), three parts unhappiness (gin)."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I think I'd like to read Beloved again and see if I have the same reaction as when I first read it. I was completely crazy in love with that book. Reading it was like a spiritual experience. Not long after I finished it, I happened to get on an elevator and there was Toni Morrison, looking totally fabulous. And I completely attacked her with praise. I mean, I went nuts screaming about what a spiritual experience I'd had reading that book, how the words must have come directly from the man upstairs and that he must have shot them straight through the top of her head so that they traveled all the way down her arm to the hand where she held her pen. Oh boy, you've never seen anyone more desperate to get out of an elevator than Toni Morrison. Later, I saw her again in the lobby and had someone take a snapshot of the two of us. It's one of my favorite photos. She looks petrified and I look out of my mind.
Book you wish you wrote:
My next one, duh. But also, there are times I read a story and I think, man, if I could write just one story like that, I could die happy. That happened when I first read Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" in the New Yorker. That story killed. And it happened when I finished Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold. And So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. And there's a very sweet book called Pobby and Dingan by Ben Rice that got to me, too.