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" Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones. "

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" Years ago, when my attempts at a writing career came to a complete stand-still, I applied to the Los Angeles Police Department. This might seem odd for a liberal woman who once went to UC Santa Cruz, but I've always had a powerful fascination with crime and serious interest in finding different ways to contend with it. "

" I wouldn't say that my family is normal. "

" I was young, maybe 4, when I learned where babies came from. "

" 'The Chosen,' if you recall, was based on the Chaim Potok novel and featured Robbie Benson's persuasive performance as a Hasidic Jew. "

" My writing process is chaos. I usually start with an overarching theme. Then I establish several story threads, but I don't outline. I just start writing and keep notes for what may come. It's an organic process that's usually pretty flexible. "

" I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21. "

" While I had no intention of ending the series after 'The Spellmans Strike Again,' I did close many doors in that book and, with the fifth one, I was opening a lot of doors and not finding anything behind them and then opening another door and another until I found something. It was a while before I found my stride. "

" I liked the idea of exposing the beams in collaborative novel. And there are many - especially in the crime world - there are many people working together: James Patterson and his stable of sub authors; and then there are like Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman and Jason Starr. "

Working Together

" Hair color is the easiest way to change your appearance, but a bad dye job might draw more attention to you. "

" I'm always accused of being a crime novelist, but I'm not really. "

" I am a huge Mel Brooks fan. And I do think that not seeing his canon of classics is a bit criminal or clueless. "

" We're all amateur investigators. We scan bookshelves, we ogle trinkets left out in the open, we calculate the cost of furniture and study the photographs on display; sometimes we even check out the medicine cabinet. "

" I usually have a sense of where my characters are personally and ways in which they might transform throughout the novel. But I never know at the outset how the book will end, nor do I ever stick to my original plan. "

" I worked for a private investigative agency briefly. I rarely had the opportunity to snoop. "

" Although I'm not an orphan and I can't lift a horse. I was, however, briefly famous for my feats of strength: at about age 11, I could competitively arm-wrestle a full-grown man. "

" There's no reason why a writer shouldn't explore and use different genres. "

" I'd like to think that if I were in prison for a crime I didn't commit, someone would be trying to get me the hell out of there. "

" I didn't feel a strong bond with the parents who raised me, and I had anything but a happy childhood. My mother was overly sensitive; my father, ascetic. I was neither. I felt as if I were living with complete strangers. I suspect that my parents felt the same way. "

" I loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre. "

" Finally, I'm recognizing that rewrites aren't some cosmic punishment for childhood wrongs but the nature of the business. "

" I was never obsessed with being adopted. I was simply curious about my biological parents. "

" I learned how to cross-country ski. "

" I'm not a huge fan of research, but sometimes you get an idea, and then you realize you don't know anything. "

" I was on a few surveillance jobs as part of a big team. I would be the person to follow the subject on foot when the need arose. But most of the time, we were sitting in a car doing nothing. "

" Band I listen to most: The Ramones. "

" I have certain rules for snooping, under which anything out in the open is fair game. "

" I tend to start books with a very broad outline, but I always leave room for happy accidents. With 'The Passenger,' there were perhaps too many of those. "

" If I were one of the three viable presidential candidates, I doubt I'd be too broken up about someone looking into my passport file. Go ahead look, I'd say. It's the passport photo I wouldn't want anyone getting his hands on. "

" 'Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon. I've always been obsessed with the idea of disappearing and becoming someone else. Even if you don't share that obsession, I can't recommend this book highly enough. "

" To properly investigate a subject, we must investigate a subject's stuff. "