When you write a high-tech thriller, and then people in the defense establishment start calling you - people I can't name - you feel you've hit a nerve.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Anybody who sits down to write, and they think 'thriller,' maybe shouldn't be thinking that way. Maybe we should be thinking 'novel,' maybe 'thriller' way in the background, but that these are real people to whom things are happening. It just happens to be a hell of an exciting story.
Thriller novelists get asked - berated, sometimes - about whether their work glorifies bad behavior, even, exploits human tragedy for entertainment.
People like to pigeonhole. People like to label - not just books and movies, but everything in their life. If people want to call me 'literary horror,' I guess that's fine. What I'm trying to do is be both thrilling and thought-provoking.
I don't like writing straight-up thrillers. I like writing about families hurled into crisis and danger - soccer moms and regular dads and husbands who might have to rescue their daughters or who are, say, hedge fund managers and have one foot on the sidelines watching their kids and the other in nefarious cover-ups and conspiracies.
I flinch when I see my name in the newspapers.
Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.
I think I'll stick with psychological thrillers.
The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.
Thrillers have become all about technology and using technology. That seemed, to me, not so interesting.
I always say 'thriller;' if they see you're a woman - and you're a blond woman - people assume you're writing about cats and romances where somebody has died.