I spent 10 years as a marketing manager. I've found my experience in the financial world invaluable background for writing about white-collar crimes.

If you're born lucky, you don't have to be good.

The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.

These events are swirling around them. In the white community, people felt like they had no control over their neighborhoods, their destiny. In the black community, centuries of government and economic forces were pushing on them. I went in with a kind of arrogance, maybe, that came from living in a very intellectual family, and I left knowing that there was a lot about the way people lived that I didn't know about.

All food starting with p is comfort food: pasta, potato chips, pretzels, peanut butter, pastrami, Pizza, pastry.

No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship

Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you're safe on the other side of them.