A: I think there is a certain ease to the voice and tone that makes it slip down as smoothly as a well-aged bourbon. It’s like listening to Shelby Foote talk; those soft cadences lull you on deeper and deeper into the story. It’s the heat, the humidity, and yes, the dogflies and mosquitoes, too.

Q: The art of mystery writing is in a class by itself. Do you take headlines from the newspapers and the media for ideas for crime plots, or are they taken mostly from imaginary events and circumstances?

A: The wellsprings of creativity are not always easy to plumb. Sometimes a headline will suggest a plot, but by the time it goes onto the paper, it may be a totally different bucket of water, purified (or contaminated) by imagination {to push a metaphor way too far!!}

Q: If you could have lunch with anyone, past or present, who would it be, and why?

A: I know I’m supposed to name a writer or a famous historical personage or someone saintly; but in actuality I’d probably be too intimidated to speak to any of those people personally. It’s enough that they lived and left behind books or memoirs I can read. No, if I could have lunch with anyone past or present, it would be a very rowdy tableful of deeply-missed friends no longer here.

Q: You have the singular experience of being born a southerner but also lived extensively up north, particularly in New York City. That must have been quite a culture shock –what were the good vs bad points of that experience? Did that experience affect your writing in any way?

A: Actually, there was very little culture shock. I’ve always been open to new experiences and people are people wherever you find them. Interestingly enough, New York is nothing but a collection of small villages. My agent walks down Broadway on the Upper West Side and keeps running into the parents of old classmates, friend of her own parents, her son’s friends. Down in SoHo, the same thing happens when I walk the streets with a friend who has lived down there for thirty years. I hope it’s made me less likely to stereotype people.

Q: Have you ever had a ‘watershed moment’ in your life that propelled you to change direction?

A: Several. Haven’t we all? Every time the road forks and we choose one direction over the other, our lives change. The first major one that I remember was the summer after my sophomore year in college. Instead of staying in NC, I went to Washington to work a summer job, met a man I never would otherwise have met, and married him. That took me to places I never might otherwise have seen. Who knows what would have happened had I stayed in NC that summer? When one decides to have a child, take/leave a job, enter/leave a marriage; when one suffers a great misfortune or else gains an unimaginable prize- watershed moments happen several times in every life.

Q: There is a debate going on in the inner circles of mystery-writers that ‘cozies’ are not up to snuff when put against the ‘grittier’ (and more graphic) mystery writers, most often men. Can a less violent, graphic and/or grittier tone have the same mass appeal, or not? Also can you share with us your own personal feelings about this unusual debate?

A: Taste is purely subjective matter, but some voices are louder and more strident about their personal tastes than others. This debate has been going on for more than 20 years and, quite frankly, I find it more than a little tiresome . Of course, both types can have the same mass appeal if marketed equally. Look at Mary Higgins Clark or Tony Hillerman. It goes back to the old cliché I first heard on our local bookmobile when I was a child and couldn’t find many adventure stories geared for girls: “Girls will read books about boys, but boys won’t read books about girls.” This would seem to imply that females read with a more open mind and less bias than males. And it is unfortunately true that the loudest voices putting down ‘cozies’ do tend to be male.

Q: Can you share with us something about yourself that is not commonly known?

A: At this point in my career, I should think everything I’m willing to share publicly is already out there. One thing I haven’t said much about is how very honored I was to receive the Sir Walter Raleigh Award last fall, and how grateful I was to the Historical Book Club of North Carolina for looking past the labels that too often pigeonhole writers like me. We do get tired of being made to sit at the back of the bus all the time. It was lovely to sit at the front for a change.

Q: Do you do your best writing in the morning or evening?

A: Evening. I’m a night owl.

Q: Do you use a computer or paper?

A: I’ve always written more easily when my fingers are on a keyboard rather than wrapped around a pen.

Q: Do you write an outline first, or do you just brainstorm, creating the plot as you go along?

A: Outlining would kill a book for me. I just create a setting and plunge in. Knowing too much would be boring and would probably result in a book that would bore my readers.

Interview Date: July 2005
Profile and questions compiled by Rosanne L., Matthews Branch Library