I was with a real jerk after the first heartbreak, and once I did the prerequisite eating an entire cake and singing "All By Myself" in the shower, I realized that people treat you badly when you let them, and that I had to respect myself and not let anyone else treat me that way again. If someone really loves you, they are your biggest champion, not your biggest detractor.

You can only make decisions with the information you have at the time

I went to a Christian School, and when I reached a certain age, I wasn't allowed to wear pants to school anymore. There was a big conference about it with my parents about how unladylike it was for me to wear pants ,this was a school where the principal and once of the coaches stood at the front door with a wooden ruler to make sure girls' skirts were an inch below their knee. So, from that day forward, I had to wear skirts, which meant that I couldn't play on the playground like I used to. I really feel like I could've been the next Serena Williams if not for that.

Books are not like albums, where you can simply download and enjoy your favorite chapter and ignore the rest.

The plot is very important because writers have to play fair with their readers, but no one would care about the plot if the character work wasn't there. So, basically every book I work on starts with me thinking not just about the bad thing that's going to happen, but how that bad thing is going to ripple through the community, the family of the victim, and the lives of the investigators. I am keenly aware when I'm working that the crimes I am writing about have happened to real people. I take that very seriously.

A good editor is one of the sharpest tools a writer can have in her toolbox.

Alafair Burke understands the criminal mind. Long Gone is both an education and an entertainment of the first order. This is a very clever and very smart novel by a very clever and smart writer. The dialogue crackles, the plot is intriguing, and the pacing is perfect.