Sisters in Crime now has more than 4,000 members worldwide.

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.

Sometimes I think I'm a one-trick pony because I'm not very inventive about new ways of telling stories.

My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.

Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed.

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

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