Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.

The rich are different than you and me: they have more money and they have more power.

I always wrote; my first story was published in the magazine The American Girl when I was 11

The crime novel has always been my favourite genre.

People have less privacy and are crammed together in cities, but in the wide open spaces they secretly keep tabs on each other a lot more

I was reading Raymond Chandler very much with the feminist eye. In six of his seven novels, it's the woman who presents herself in a sexual way, who is the main bad person. And then you start reading more fiction, whether crime fiction or straight fiction, it's just bad girls trying to make good boys do bad things, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. The woman that thou gavest me made me do it, Adam says to God.

Write what you care about.