I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.

Well, the clues are there. They always are. Which is why when crimes are solved decades after the fact, it's obvious that the clues had always been right in front of them. A traffic ticket in Brooklyn is how they got ["Son of Sam" serial killer] David Berkowitz. You've just got to look.

I want to have enough data, so I won't write myself into thin air, so that I can extrapolate and give you this secret human infrastructure. The only way I sate my own curiosity is to create this from scratch. There must be commanding love stories. There must be great moral cost.

And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

You try to learn who you are. You work hard. You've either got it or you don't when it comes to writing books. And you tend to only get these things if you want them, and want them to the exclusion of everything else.

Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.