'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I thought about doing it as a novella under a pseudonym, because I didn't want to damage my career.

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

I think if you looked at the kind of ebb and flow of supernatural fiction and horror fiction, it does seem to be more popular in times when were hammered over the head daily with threats from all angles, very real threats.

Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.

I think pressure can be an incentive toward improvement, and while I'm not denying that I feel some, I will also stress that it is self-inflicted and hopefully can be channeled in a healthy way.

I've never really found inspiration for story ideas in the news, but I'd say it certainly affects our lives in so many ways. I would say that certainly the stories of the day appear in the work - I just have never gone so far as to say, well, this particular event could influence a plot of an entire book.

Horror and supernatural novels give you a lot of what you look for in a crime novel, just with a twist that was very fresh for me as a reader.