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" 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think that says a lot about an author's writing. "
Tess Gerritsen
Bible
Writing
Think
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" I organise jam sessions every month. We have an open session, so everyone knows about it, and we can get as many as 30 people showing up at the house. Somebody will play a tune, and everyone will pick up on it. My best friends are all musicians. "
Tess Gerritsen
People
Musicians
Best
" Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer. "
Tess Gerritsen
Learning
Me
Body
" After twelve years of living in Hawaii, I'd gotten a serious case of 'rock fever.' I just couldn't live on an island any longer. "
Tess Gerritsen
Live
Living
Island
" The hunting of monsters is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who feel bound by such trivial doctrines as law or national borders. "
Tess Gerritsen
Hunting
Heart
Feel
" I'd been writing stories since I was a child. I wrote little books for my mom and bound them myself with needle and thread. Mostly, they were about my pets. "
Tess Gerritsen
Child
Writing
Myself
" Fans are always asking me where I get my ideas from. The answer is that I'm very curious, and I get inspiration from everywhere. I read the newspapers voraciously, so I know what's going on in real crime. I pay attention to the strange stories people tell me, and I also read a lot of scientific and forensic journals. "
Tess Gerritsen
Me
Curious
Crime
" 'Ice Cold' is the eighth in my 'Rizzoli and Isles' thriller series. It was inspired by a true occurrence in the 1960s, now known as the 'Dugway Incident,' in which 6,000 sheep mysteriously died overnight in a remote area of Utah. I thought, 'What if it happened instead to people? What if the inhabitants of an entire village vanished overnight?' "
Tess Gerritsen
True
Village
People
" My brother often complains to me about the 'angry Asian male' in the United States. As a female, I haven't encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They're angry because, for so many years, they've been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we're accepted into various circles. "
Tess Gerritsen
Brother
Me
Women
" A project like 'Rizzoli & Isles' is something you can't pursue. It's something that comes to you... I like to call it 'fairy dust.' And it happened without my having to do anything. "
Tess Gerritsen
Fairy
Dust
Project
" My mother is an immigrant from China, and she filled my head with stories about ghosts and fighting monks in China, so the world of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' was a very familiar one. "
Tess Gerritsen
Fighting
Mother
She
" There is no better test of character than when you're tossed into crisis. That's when we see one's true colors shine through. So I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them. "
Tess Gerritsen
Colors
Shine
Best
" I was a writer first, and knew I'd be a storyteller at age seven. But since my parents are very practical, they urged me to go into a profession that would be far more secure, so I went to medical school. "
Tess Gerritsen
School
Me
Age
" I think what medical training does is it gives you the language, the tools to look up facts. I think medical training gives you a sense of how to approach a problem, how to look at symptoms and go down the list of what it might be. "
Tess Gerritsen
Think
Facts
Medical
" I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them. "
Tess Gerritsen
Walk
Me
Writing
" Writing is very much an emotional process; it requires you to be very in touch with your feelings. That is the opposite of what you're taught as a medical doctor. We're supposed to be detached and logical. Maybe because I started off as a writer and then became a doctor, I'm able to integrate those two. "
Tess Gerritsen
You
Medical
Doctor
" I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred. "
Tess Gerritsen
Shy
Cruelty
Violence
" My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional. "
Tess Gerritsen
Successful
Started
Me
" I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical. "
Tess Gerritsen
Heart
Me
Way
" While the TV show 'Rizzoli & Isles' may have been inspired by my books, show runner Janet Tamaro has total control over where the TV characters go from there. As Janet once put it, I'm the birth mother, but she's the mother who adopted them, and now that Jane and Maura are living in her house, they have to do what she tells them to do. "
Tess Gerritsen
Now
Living
Control
" Only with maturity did I come to appreciate my own Chinese roots: not just the food and the ancient history, but also the philosophy of child-rearing and the respect for education and knowledge. "
Tess Gerritsen
Respect
Knowledge
Education
" One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was the globe that I now keep right beside my desk. "
Tess Gerritsen
Got
Desk
Christmas
" I was an anthropology major in college, and I've had a lifelong fascination with Egyptology, mummies, and all sorts of bizarre cultural practices. "
Tess Gerritsen
College
Bizarre
Cultural
" Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens. "
Tess Gerritsen
Feeling
Writing
Unexpected
" I think of all media, television is the most powerful when it comes to selling books, because when you have a feature film, yeah, there's a rush. But then after that month is over and the movie goes out of release, that's it. "
Tess Gerritsen
Powerful
You
Think
" My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me. "
Tess Gerritsen
Family
Science
School
" My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors. "
Tess Gerritsen
Said
Brother
Writing
" I'm trained in science, believe in logic, and like to think there's an explanation for everything. And I'm truly not really at ease with other people. "
Tess Gerritsen
Science
Believe
Logic
" For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy? "
Tess Gerritsen
Book
What If
Victim
" I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could. "
Tess Gerritsen
School
Growing Up
Be Different
" Medicine is probably one of the best backgrounds for a writer to find stories. I always think cops and docs have the best background because we see so much of human behavior, such a range of human emotions. "
Tess Gerritsen
Think
Medicine
Best