Look and Listen

Biography

I travelled a lot overseas as a chuild and was tremendously affected by being caught in the Franco-Algerian War. (We used to watch the bombing every night as if it was fireworks.) I was raised as a Quaker and they do not acknowledge evil. People are basically good and get messed up by negative experiences, is their philosophy. Even as a ten year old I could see this didn't cover will-to-power, which I've come to think of as the number one human motivator. What benefit do criminals get from crime and how do they rationalize it? I've worked a lot of dfferent jobs -- not very satisfactorily (jargon makes me cry) and now write full time. I live in Connecticut, have two grown kids and a ninfiction writer husband. We are both trial junkies. My first novel, Devlyn, sold 100,000 copies and was also sold in Germany. It took place in 1860 and was strongly influenced by the nineteenth century authors I was immersed in at the time. The murderer accidentally kills the one person she wanted to protect. It also has a ghost - I have ghosts in every one of my books - not so much because I believe in them as that I've never met a person who wasn't haunted. Find Courtney came out in 2004 and Model Prisoner is scheduled for 2008.

Inspiration

I want to know WHY. As a child I added "Motive" cards to the Clue game, because it wasn't interesting to me without question answered. Motive isn't just one more thing...it's the ONLY thing. Col. Mustard did it in the kitchen with a candlestick...for kicks. His life (and the life of his victim" need to tell us WHY. I'm an obsessive reader (and viewer) of true crime and most of my stories are based on true cases. My husband and I covered the Beth Carpenter trial and I look forward to future trials that happen anywhere in a 2 hour radius of my Bolton home.