You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.

At their best, thrillers not only entertain. Ideally they also reflect the society in which they are set, analyzing our fears and how we perceive the world.

Your obligation as writers is to distinguish yourself. … The ultimate result should be a book that you write that no one else could have written.

As long as thriller authors teach us about our world, they'll be relevant.

As much as I like it when a book I'm writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.

Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.

" ... What if?" Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.