There are few times that I feel more at peace, more in tune, more Zen, if you will, than when I force myself to unplug.
I don’t find any real rivalries with crime and thriller writers anyway. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but for the most part the writers I compete with, if you want to use that word, it’s a pretty friendly rivalry. I think we all realise that the boat rises and sinks together.
I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people’s attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope ‘The Woods’ does that.
We’re called New Jersey but we’re actually the suburbs of New York.
I’ve never chased the dollar, I’ve always chased the reader’s heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am.
That’s what a good crime novelist – any good novelist – should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight.
A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.
Im 48 years old, not a kid anymore by any definition, but here is a universal truth that every adult at some point will realize: We are all always 17 years old, waiting for our lives to begin.
I don’t necessarily love the sports per se, I love the stories behind them. Also in a kind of perverse way I like to study what it does to us, why we care so much. It’s caring about something that’s utterly meaningless.
Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It’s much too strict, but it’s a hell of a teacher.
In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That’s the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That’s part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it.
I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I’m not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
No characters in ‘Stay Close,’ including the leads, are black and white. I want them to be grey. I think that makes for a much more interesting reading experience, something that will stay with you a little bit longer.
No, I don’t live in heartache. I don’t cry myself to sleep or any of that. I am, I tell myself, over it. But I do feel a void, icky as that sounds. And – like it or not – I still think about her every single day.
That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song.
Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something.
Painful memories didn’t just ease back in-they shoved the door open hard, all of them and all at once.
You want this so badly – this second chance, this chance at real redemption – that you can’t see the truth.
The most annoying and full- of- crap thing a writer says is, I write only for myself, I don’t care if anyone reads it. A writer without a reader doesn’t exist.