I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead.

The National Surveillance State doesn't want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.

Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers' high hardback margins essentially disappear.

When I wrote my eighth thriller, Inside Out, in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners.

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.'

Overall, one of the things that excites me most about self-publishing is that the highest-value use of my time in promoting the books will be found in writing more of them.

The movie is someone else's art. But it's great marketing for books.