An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction.

An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville’s THE TWELVE is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction.

I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.

If it's broken, it can be fixed.

The nicest notes I've received from readers are those that tell me I've gotten them back into reading for entertainment. For me, there is no greater compliment.

It's not at all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book. If I do that well, I feel, good tidings generally will follow and readers will stick with me.

I do think Austin is a great town for writers; we have a lot of them here. But I grew up in Austin, and so I didn't move here because it was a creative mecca; I was just lucky to live here.