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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. "

Lisa Lutz

Writing

Powerful

Police

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

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

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

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

" '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. "

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

" 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. "

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

Lisa Lutz

Sense

Smart

" 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'. "

" I learned how to cross-country ski. "

" I love 'The Wire'. I can't think of a television show that I think is superior to it in any way. I was obsessed with it from the moment it came on the air. I do also love 'Doctor Who' and 'Get Smart'. "

" 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. "

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

" 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'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. "

Lisa Lutz

Think

Prison

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

Lisa Lutz

Relationship

Jogging

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

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

" 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 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. "

Lisa Lutz

Working Together

Together

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 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've got no business giving advice to anyone. Even a fictional character. "