The Force deals a lot with the heroin epidemic, which I'm sorry to know people are experiencing in Canada.

I would prefer things to be peaceful and not have conflict.

I think you can use fiction to get inside people's minds.

It's important to me that the reader goes on a ride with the characters, that you set context enough to know, "Okay, here's where we are in the world. Now we're just going to go inside this person's head, this guy's heart, this woman's ambitions and take it down to very, very small scale."

I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about it, that I needed to try to make some sort of contribution, at least try to make some sort of difference in the real world.

The Force deals a lot with the heroin epidemic, which I'm sorry to know people are experiencing in Canada.

I never think about a movie when I'm writing a book, because I think only two things could happen and both of them are bad. You write a lousy novel and a lousy film.