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

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" I have a love/hate relationship with jogging. "

" 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. "

" I investigate more directly. I tend to ask a lot of questions and don't feel satisfied until I have the answer. "

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

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

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

" If you're trying to hide, avoid using your own name. Have a couple spares that you can pull out of your pocket anytime, the more thoroughly documented the better. "

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

" You can't be suspicious 24/7. It's too exhausting. "

" Maggie is my sister-in-law, married to my brother David. She is a defense attorney who devotes 25 percent of her practice to pro bono wrongful-incarceration cases. "

" Sometimes a single item can wrap up, in a nutshell, who a person is. In my grandparents' home, a clear plastic container was enthroned on top of the mahogany bar for at least a decade. Painted on the lid in pink, yellow and light blue was 'Have a Nosh With Mort & Ethel'. "

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

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

" The sense of not knowing where I came from let me be as smart as I wanted to be. "

" 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. "

" I don't feel like I'm a writer who works under any influence. "

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

" When I was 6, I learned where I came from, which was one step removed from the usual circumstances. I was adopted. "

" '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. "

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

" For more than three months, I had been president and primary owner of Spellman Investigations, and I can say with complete certainty that I had more power in this office as an underling. My title, it seemed, was purely decorative. I was captain of an unfashionable and sinking ship. "

" My mother, at sixty, is one of those classic beauties: all neck and cheekbones, sharp lines that hide her wrinkles from a distance. She still gets whistles from construction workers from three stories up. "

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

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

" I could never really choose a favorite book, but whenever I'm asked what my favorite movie is, I always say 'Withnail & I,' a British film from 1987. It's funny and sad and absolutely gorgeous to look at. It's the film I can watch over and over again. "

" 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. "

" Six years after I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B,' I received my first paycheck as a writer. It included both the $3,000 in deferred option money as well as half the fee for performing the initial rewrite. The amount was scale according to the Writer's Guild guidelines, but a lot, according to me. "