So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.

Full of thrills and tension - but smart and human too.

To fill a small bag means selecting,and choosing, and evaluating. There's no logicial end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I'd be like the rest of you.

A handgun at two hundred feet is the same thing as crossing your fingers and making a wish.

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on.

I have a kind of old-fashioned, artisan approach.