Reporting is pretty vital to me. It keeps me connected to the world. A 40-hour-per-week day job may be less feasible as time goes on.

I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.

She might not be as strong as everyone she met, or as fast, or even as smart. But she could bullshit with the best of them. Combine that quality with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life.

Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

I like to see writers reach bigger and bigger audiences, and stand-alones have allowed some of them to do just that.

I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not.

It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world.