Some old guy once said that the meaning of life is that it ends.

You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.

My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever.

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 write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.

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.

I'd been a thriller reader all my life.