She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.

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.

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.

And life changes. Maybe just a little, maybe a lot. And at some point, it just isn't worth the fight to fix it.

It means working harder to do the research but I don't really mind - I don't think I have what it takes to chase criminals through back alleys and wade through blood at crime scenes.

I liked the challenge of writing in a very concise structure in which both meaning and form are important.

Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.