I made straight A's and never got into any trouble, and I still impose those standards on myself. So writing is my chance to escape and become the sleaziest, scummiest role.

I think of my books now as suspense novels, usually with a love story incorporated. They're absolutely a lot harder to write than romances. They take more plotting and real character development.

People don't care how smart woman is as long as she's charming and gay and pretty.

I have no personal knowledge of, or experience with, paramilitary hate groups, or heart transplantation, or escapees from maximum security prisons, or what it's like to be profoundly deaf. But I've written about all these topics, and the books became bestsellers. I figure that if something interests me, there's a reasonably good chance that it's going to interest the reader, too. As I approach my keyboard each day, I remind myself to have a good time - as good a time as one can have doing the hardest work there is.

For each book, there's a back story of where the idea came from. Sometimes it's derived from a current event or topic of discussion. Often it begins with a character. And often, I have NO idea what sparked the idea. It's just there.

Should men and women be equal in all things? Absolutely. But I'm old-fashioned in that I like the differences between the sexes. My male characters are neither Neanderthals nor Prince Charmings. They're flawed.

Life was precious. Life was fragile. Here one moment, gone the next. Every second should be milked for all it's worth because you never know when the bottom was going to drop out.