For the record, I'd like to say that I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I have a chance to get even first" Kinsey Millhone, V is for Vengeance

I figure guys are like Whitman's Samplers. I like to take a little bite out of each and then move on before the whole box gets stale.

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.

Emotion doesn't travel in a straight line. Like water, our feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of neediness and neglect, the hairline fractures in our character usually hidden from public view.

My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.

Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.