My husband makes fun of me, because I know I can use strong prose to jazz-hand my way through plot that isn't as interesting as I'd like it to be.

My creator owned books sell better than my mainstream books. And that makes no sense.

When I'm looking for a strong female character, or a strong character at all, I'm looking for a character that has a purpose in that story, that has an interior life of some sort. They don't have to be physically strong; they don't have to be morally strong or ethically strong, because men and women come in a huge variety of all of those things. Emotionally, ethically - I'm less concerned with that. I just don't want them to be props. That's the only thing that offends me.

I was asked in an interview once: You're writing another book with a female lead? Aren't you afraid you're going to be pigeonholed? And I thought, I write a team superhero book, an uplifting solo hero book, I write a horror-western, and I write a ghost story. What am I gonna be pigeonholed as? Has a man in the history of men ever been asked if he was going to be pigeonholed because he wrote two consecutive books with male leads?

I think I'm very strong at dialogue, I think I'm very strong in characterization. I think sometimes I use dialogue and character work to cover weaknesses in my plotting.

Seriously, just buy the [expletive deleted] book. I promise you'll like it. Unless you're [expletive deleted].

The reader is not the customer. The retailer is the customer. So I try to have as much interaction with the retailers as possible because those are my customers.