As much as I adore Agatha Christie - and I think people make this claim about murder mysteries in general - it's often a very conservative mode of storytelling. Usually it's the greedy, climbing, new-money slimeball who wants to take from the aristocracy.

One day I want to write a full-on horror book.

My strength is character. I'm pretty good at building walking-talking humans with brains like beehives.

My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.

If you've been in the art world for more than eight years, you realize another generation is making the exact same work as the previous generation - but treating it like it's never been done before. It becomes very cyclical very quickly.

Now we're in an age of singles. It's actually always been more about singles for most of music history.

Every time I try to write on vacation, I fail miserably.