'The Expats' would not exist without e-books.
I loved editing, and being a cookbook editor is a really a great job.
'The Expats' is a thriller, but one that tends more toward general fiction than toward breathless pulp.
Everyone has secrets, and I think some people flee from home - far from home - to try to keep those secrets.
I try to construct each of my novels around one central theme - core tensions shared by the characters.
Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.
I'm concerned, as I guess all middle-aged people are, about the younger generations' level of literacy.
I give tremendous weight to my positive reviews and none whatsoever to my negative ones.
Every book that doesn't first have to get past a gatekeeper or two, or 10, before being put in front of the public will be worse.
Who will want to write if writing doesn't pay?
I spend a huge amount of time writing about the book instead of writing the actual text.
Writing is a solitary occupation; we don't really have any colleagues.
One of the epiphanies I had was that I got into publishing because I love literature.
Any setting can be a good setting for a novel.
If you can't figure out how to make the beginning of your book compelling, you're probably not writing a compelling book.
Although no one loves a typo, it's close to impossible to eradicate every single little mistake in a manuscript.
I live in Greenwich Village in New York City, but I rarely write at home, where there's too much else to do.
