I always know when a novel is going to be a Barbara Vine one. In fact I believe that if I weren't to write it as Barbara Vine, I wouldn't be able to write it at all.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
For everyone I know who is a writer, there was some awkward time in their lives when they had to learn to call themselves one.
If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.
I've always thought a novelist only has one character, and that is himself or herself. In my case, me.
I'd always wanted to write crime fiction. I loved Nancy Drew.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
The fact is that in this day and age I don't think any novelist can assume that a book will get attention.
I don't think the Barbara Vines are mysteries in any sense. The Barbara Vine is much more slowly paced. It is a much more in-depth, searching sort of book; it doesn't necessarily have a murder in it.
I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.
I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
I never know as a writer when I set out into a novel where it's going to take me.