What kinds of stories do you like to tell?
I want to write emotional stories with scenes that are exciting, suspenseful, and, yes, emotional. I like reading puzzle stories but I don't enjoy writing them. I'm not shooting for the reader's head. I'm aiming for his or her heart. There are lots of books that you read on a plane and two days later you can't remember much of anything about it. My books are not like that.
I like to write about ordinary people doing heroic things.
How do you pick a story?
Some writers start with a plot idea. I did that once with "The Traitor's Mistress." What if the President is a traitor and the Sec. of State decides that he must be killed? But I find that unsatisfying. I now like to start with a person and a human concept, for example, revenge or redemption or duty, loyalty, overcoming some flaw, etc. Sometimes I start with an emotional situation and build a story around that. What if you thought that your child was dead but she wasn't? What if she was a Jane Doe lying in some hospital bed, forgotten and unknown? Who would find her? How would she ever come home? Those were the questions I pursued in one of the plot lines in The Concrete Kiss.
So, I look for an emotional situation, a human problem, a threat, and a character I admire and I try to mix them together and come up with an exciting and interesting story.
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