Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

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.

I'm lucky in having found the perfect partner to spend my life with

Capo, my first golden retriever, so loved to swim she once jumped off a cliff to get into Lake Superior.

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.

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

I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.