Q: Where do you get ideas for your books?
A: There’s no single or simple answer, alas. Some strike out of nowhere
like lightning
out of a clear sky. Other ones simmer for years. Some seem clear-cut when I
start,
but then the book does a bend on me and takes a turn I hadn’t foreseen.
.
Q: When you revise, are you a putter-inner or a taker-outer?
A: A taker-outer, definitely! I do a lot of cutting.
Q: What’s the best thing about being a writer?
A: I don’t have to dress up or drive to work.
Q: What’s the worst thing?
A: Keeping up with technology is hard. I don’t mean just learning to cope
with your
computer when you want to dropkick it out the window. Everything keeps
changing
at an amazing rate: the technologies of communication, medicine, crime
investigation, and
crime itself. You try to stay current and faithful to the facts, but the
facts are in constant flux.
Q: How many books have you written?
A: Fifty-two counting the anthologized novellas. About seventy-seven if
you count the textbooks I worked on, although many of those were
collaborations.
Q: What’s your next?
A: ONE TRACK MIND, a mystery-romance with a tie-in to NASCAR. It’s set
primarily in the
mountains of North Carolina.
Q: Do you know what you’ll write next?
A: I’m playing around with a romantic suspense set in Key West, one of my
favorite cities.
Q: How important is setting in your books?
A: It depends on the book. Some stories demand to happen in a certain
place, but others
offer you more flexibility. I wrote a romance called HEARTLAND that was
arbitrarily set in
Nebraska, but it could have had almost any rural background. I grew up in
Nebraska, so I
chose it because I was familiar with it. But another book, EVERY SORT OF
HEAVEN had
events that could occur only in New Orleans. Ultimately, though, the story’s
got to be the boss,
not the setting.
