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" 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. "

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

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

" '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. "

" 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'. "

" Band I listen to most: The Ramones. "

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

" I wrote my first screenplay on a lark, because it was a storytelling format that felt like a familiar shorthand - we all watch movies, don't we? But even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family was entirely unconnected with the movie industry, and I never truly believed that it would one day be my fate. "

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I learned how to cross-country ski. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "