Trying to write books with a subject matter or in a genre or style you're not familiar with is the best way to find the Big Block looming.

For me a thriller is a very carefully structured story.

But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with.

In the shaded portions where the two spheres of different lives meet, certain fundamentals- moods, loves, fears, angers- can't be hidden. That's the contract.

I've worked for law firms, I've worked for corporations, and for the past 20 years, I've been writing working for myself, and believe me it's a lot better. That's a big part of the James Bond panache, that you're responsible, 100 percent responsible, for the success or failure of your mission in life, whatever it is.