Every successful author I know faced crushing rejection early on, and they got back up and kept going.
Don't try to follow in my footsteps. Make your own footsteps! No one else can tell the stories that are inside of you except for you.
I'm afraid of the general things that everyone is afraid of: a bump in the night that could be a cat or Death dragging his sickle across the room; losing my health; becoming homeless, never meeting George Clooney.
I don't understand people who say they're bored. Look out your window.
I was with a real jerk after the first heartbreak, and once I did the prerequisite eating an entire cake and singing "All By Myself" in the shower, I realized that people treat you badly when you let them, and that I had to respect myself and not let anyone else treat me that way again. If someone really loves you, they are your biggest champion, not your biggest detractor.
I went to a Christian School, and when I reached a certain age, I wasn't allowed to wear pants to school anymore. There was a big conference about it with my parents about how unladylike it was for me to wear pants ,this was a school where the principal and once of the coaches stood at the front door with a wooden ruler to make sure girls' skirts were an inch below their knee. So, from that day forward, I had to wear skirts, which meant that I couldn't play on the playground like I used to. I really feel like I could've been the next Serena Williams if not for that.
It really sucks getting older. Sometimes I'll be walking along and I'll just glance over my shoulder to make sure nothing has fallen off.
I am a bit of a Dudley Do-Gooder, though, because if I see a car accident or something bad happen, I am one of those idiots who runs toward the problem instead of away from it. Not that I would recommend this behavior.
First and foremost, I want people to have a good read, because I want everything I write to entertain people. There are always different layers to the story, though, so if you want to think about social justice, or sexism or racism or homophobia, or really drill down into why the world is a better place when the police force looks like the people they are policing, then that's there, too.
I am a voracious reader myself. I don't stick to one genre. My only criteria is that it's a good story. I try to bring that to my work because I think people can read your excitement about a story.
A good editor is one of the sharpest tools a writer can have in her toolbox.
The plot is very important because writers have to play fair with their readers, but no one would care about the plot if the character work wasn't there. So, basically every book I work on starts with me thinking not just about the bad thing that's going to happen, but how that bad thing is going to ripple through the community, the family of the victim, and the lives of the investigators. I am keenly aware when I'm working that the crimes I am writing about have happened to real people. I take that very seriously.
I think a lot of guys who are on the internet a lot, they're kind of anesthetized to some of the violent language and all that because they see it all the time.
If you're a smart guy, you should really try to find out what women are thinking. I mean, we are 51 percent of the population.
A lot of men just don't read. They don't read fiction at all.
People just make stupid mistakes. And they keep making them and keep making them, and suddenly they can't dig themselves out.
I grew up reading crime fiction and, especially in the '80s, women were just there to be saved or screwed.
Usually, guys, when something bad happens, they punish someone else.
When a woman creates an unlikable character, a lot of people think it's a mistake.
A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.
I think that people do things for a reason - that we have mental illness, that we have genetic wiring that can get triggered by certain environmental factors.
I'm sold as a literary writer in Holland; I'm sold as crime fiction in England. I think of it as just literature.
Ultimately, I'm in control of what's going on in the books, so I can back off, if it's scaring me too much.
I'm not somebody who believes in evil.
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