New Orleans cuisine is Creole rather than Cajun.

Delete nothing. Move nothing. Change nothing. Learn everything.

This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.

The sky is purple, the flare of a match behind a cupped hand is gold; the liquor is green, bright green, made from a thousand herbs, made from altars. Those who know enough to drink Chartreuse at Mardi Gras are lucky, because the distilled essence of the town burns in their bellies. Chartreuse glows in the dark, and if you drink enough of it, your eyes will turn bright green.

I've certainly learned a great deal from my husband, though, and could never have written a book like Liquor without him and the people he introduces me to and the stories he brings home.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.