Like most people, I have this sort of love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh. This is my home, and at times I miss it and find it tremendously exciting, and other times I want to catch the first thing out that has wheels.

My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa.

I love L.A., but Pittsburgh just is home. This is what I know. This is where I was born and raised. This is what molded me to make me who I am.

I've told so many stories to so many friends of mine. I have friends in Pittsburgh, in West Virginia, and in Indy. That's three different demographics of people, and they all laughed, so I assumed that if I find something funny and all my friends find something funny, I hope people everywhere will find it funny.

I am haunted by what my life would have been had I not had the courage in my early twenties to leave Pittsburgh for New York City and really commit to being a writer. Pittsburgh is both post-industrial and provincial, and the opportunities there are limited. It would have been quite easy to simply drift through life.

I had a great AP U.S. History teacher in Pittsburgh. We still exchange Christmas cards. She was the first teacher who said I was a good writer - and I'd never heard that before. And so I remember that, and I remember that level of loving the material and really loving writing about it.

Kate Chambers, amateur sleuth in "Ground Truth: A Pittsburgh Murder Mystery," believes that "One drink sharpens your wit, two drinks makes you a philosopher, three or more drinks just makes you stupid.

If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.

The William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh... was the place where Champagne Music was born.