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The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

I often will write a scene from three different points of view to find out which has the most tension and which way I'm able to conceal the information I'm trying to conceal. And that is, at the end of the day, what writing suspense is all about.

I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.

I read what I like to write: romantic suspense. I also love thrillers and novels of suspense, but I can't handle extreme violence and torture.

You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger.

Whether labeled as such or not, I think every book I've ever written has been, more or less, a romantic suspense. I have always put tremendous effort into making each book a page turner: The harder it is for the reader to put it down, the better I've done my job.

Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

I think suspense should be like any other color on a writer's palette. I suppose I'm in the minority but I think it's crazy for 'literary fiction' to divorce itself from stories that are suspenseful, and assign anything with cops or spies or criminals to some genre ghetto.

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.