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I was a big and un-ironic fan of Dear Abby when I was a kid in Chicago. I think I sort of internalized her. So I have this inner Abby: cranky, proper, folksy yet scathing, with a beehive hairdo. But that's my issue.

The Goth character was a difficult thing to get my head round. I'm not really a fan of Goth music. I'm more a piano and guitar man - that's what I love.

This character's entirely invented, and the woman that I interviewed wouldn't recognize herself, or really anything about herself, in this book, which she hasn't read, because she doesn't read English.

Just because the character listens to an iPod and wears black nail polish, she's goth. That was just a misused word.

I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved.

'Say Her Name' was a book I never wanted to write and never expected to write. I wasn't trying to do anything except write a book for Aura - a book that I thought I had to write.

As I read, I start to form clear ideas of the characters and allow myself to be a proper conduit for this author's voice so that you will feel you have been on a seductive audio journey.

I had a gothic phase, and now I'm more edgy chic.

Kellie Overbey gave me this play called 'Girl Talk.' I read it and totally fell in love with the characters. I told her she had to let me direct it and put Marcia DeBonis in it.

My narrators tend to be women with low self-esteem, so I can send them to charm school.