One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that.

Why do all your brilliant ideas involve felonies?

I work with the dead, but I am working for the living.

I hated myself for needing him at such times, for craving his strength whenever I felt upset.

Though Anne was born in Alabama and schooled in Mississippi, she had traveled North, and, like many Southerners, gained a theoretical understanding of the concept of cold. But the mind is an overprotective parent. What it doesn't care for, it hides. Like many inhabiting the subtropics, Anne had repressed the reality of subzero mercury.

I have a cotillion event. Some yacht-club charity fundraiser thingy. Whitney is insisting, and Kit took her side.” Three wide smiles. “Oh shut up.

Channel your outrage ... Do that which you are able to do.