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.

We have years to converse with someone, to blurt and rant, to explain our desires and anger and regrets - and oh how we squander those moments.

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.

In other words, the people who populate my books are more than caricatures.

Too much screaming in Congress. Too much screaming everywhere.

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.