When you write as a woman, there's this feeling there's going to be a softness.

I always say 'thriller;' if they see you're a woman - and you're a blond woman - people assume you're writing about cats and romances where somebody has died.

I busted my chin open trying to be Evel Knievel on my bike. When it happened, you could see straight through to the bone, I thought my dad was going to pass out. It left a scar that I still have now.

Most of my books begin with a nap on my couch here, when I dream up characters and story lines, and then I write on my laptop in the recliner and handle the business side of email at my desk, which is sagging in the middle - maybe from so many words?

I taped the autopsy photos from Marilyn Monroe's death to my lunch box in fifth grade, and I would write stories in which someone inevitably died.

I'm going to name a name: Janet Evanovich. She writes the same book over and over, and I read every single one of them and eagerly anticipate them.