Safety, reputation, their lives, their friends, and their world. Writers typically try to avoid that because it's not expedient.

I don't think secrets are a bad thing. I think there's this idea that everything needs to be transparent in order for it to be free.

I feel that I'm solid at description.

I like the idea of the book being wiser than the person who wrote it. None of the novels I've written are direct transcriptions of me blathering over dinner with a glass of wine in my hand. I don't hold any illusion of those conversations being of particular value. The books, though, are - I hope - bigger than my opinions, investigations that go beyond my own intellect or wit.

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.

I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R.E.M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.