I read a lot of true crime growing up - 'The Stranger Beside Me' by Ann Rule about Ted Bundy.

I grew up watching the 'People's Choice Awards.'

Reading is exercise for our brains in the guise of pleasure. Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them.

As much as we would like to deny it, reading is not vital to human survival.

If there is still an American dream, reading is one of the bootstraps by which we can all pull ourselves up.

I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'Nancy Drew,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Rebecca.' This was where I became inspired to be a writer.

I've never purposefully based a character on any one person I know, but I'm certain there are amalgamations that exist.

I'm over the word 'like' in conversation, and 'you know' seems to be the placeholder of choice, but when I'm writing dialogue, I tend to use those phrases because that's how people talk.

There aren't many people in the world who can say that they are doing the job they've wanted to do since childhood, so in that regard, I feel incredibly fortunate.

As awful as crime can be, it's what happens afterward - the struggling to get out of bed, to put one foot in front of the other - that alters people.