I wrote my senior essay on the Santa Fe Writer's Colony and my dissertation on sacred landscapes - the Grand Canyon, the Dakota Badlands. As a setting, I love the West. I just love that western landscape.

Mysteries always have the potential for interesting connections between the elements. I'm also most interested in the relationship between the characters. As in 'Masterpiece,' I'm trying to create characters who not only are solving a mystery but are solving the riddle of their own personal relationships.

The funny thing is, though I write mysteries, it is the one genre in adult fiction I never read. I read Nancy Drew, of course, when I was a kid, but I think the real appeal is as a writer because I'm drawn to puzzly, complicated plots.

Learning disabilities do not go away, but you learn how to adapt. You may have to work a little bit harder; it may take a long time. You just may do it differently - but you can do it.

A lot of my family on both sides have worked in education and nursing, and my grandmother was a nurse; my sister is a nurse, and her - my other sister's daughter is going into nursing. There's a lot of that in the family.

I knew I wanted considerable education so that I wouldn't have to work as hard as my parents.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.