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I am in the interesting position of being sometimes skimmed by the critics and called literature and sometimes called historical fiction.

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.

I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift.

I wish I could think of a suitable name for the kind of writing I do.

I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

I like to give people novels I think they would like, on no particular occasion - just when we're in a bookstore together. I like to receive reference books on my birthday.

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

I tend to like to read history - recent history, because I find that much more intriguing than just a writer's imagination.