What I enjoy as entertainment is what I enjoy writing.
Janet Evanovich
You can get through very serious and sometimes horrible and sometimes embarrassing and very awkward situations with humor. It gives us a way out.
I look at the plotline and let my co-author basically write the book; first draft. Then they give it to me, and I totally destroy it and write all my stuff over it.
Way back before the 'Alex Barnaby' series was first published, we were talking with Dark Horse then about making it into a graphic novel of some sort. We just couldn't get it together at the time; we had too many projects going on. We weren't sure how we wanted to bring it forward.
I did a co-authored book not so long ago that was an American historical romance set at the turn of the century. I'm fascinated by that period in time and would love to do more.
Since I can barely write two books a year the best solution seems to be co-author projects. My goal isn't to get another writer to clone me... it's more to produce a book that shares my vision of positive, fun entertainment.
If you want to cry, you're not going to like my books.
The best we can do is prioritize our needs and make choices accordingly.
We don't appreciate the value of humor sometimes.
I like being able to provide consistent and frequent literary choices for my fans.
I wasn't always a writer. When I went to college and majored in fine arts, I was a painter. Then I was a stay-at-home mom.
I think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they're going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.
When you're trying to expand your business, it's about real estate in the stores.
I know nothing about making a movie.
I think I'm a pretty average person, and I respond to positive things, so I write for myself.
The 'Barnaby' books were always intended to be graphic novels.
I had been going around to everybody saying Katherine Heigl has to be 'Stephanie Plum', and then one day, I got that phone call saying that it was Katherine.
I'm a sitcom junky. And I love rom coms. Mind candy.
I'm a real voyeur.
The 'Stephanie Plums' are very much Jersey books. So you can't get away from attitude and objectionable language.
When I'm plotting out a book, I use a storyboard - I'll have maybe three lines across on the storyboard and just start working through the plot line. I always know where relationships will go and how the book is going to end.
I've read comics all my life and have wanted to write a comic for as long as I can remember. Alex Barnaby and Sam Hooker seemed like the perfect team to make the move into the graphic medium.
Every time I write 'Stephanie Plum', it's going to be Katherine Heigl's face there.
Kate O'Hare is a former SEAL and is currently in the FBI - we know that there are no women in the SEALs, but we think there should be.
I struggled to learn basic skills, get a grip on markets, find my own unique voice, create story lines and come up to speed with the industry. I struggled for ten years before having any success.
I actually really suck at naming books, so lots of years ago, readers were sending in their ideas for titles, and what we realized is that they were smarter than us. So we thought, Hey, go for it. So now we have a contest every year.
My world is better. Why would I want to waste my time playing golf? I can get up in the morning and be in this whole other world. I love my life.
I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea.
Somewhere along the line, I realized that I liked telling stories, and I decided that I would try writing. Ten years later, I finally got a book published. It was hard. I had no skills. I knew nothing about the business of getting published. So I had to keep working at it.
I go to bars and restaurants, and I sit and I eavesdrop on people and I watch people in shopping centers and, you know, I read the newspapers and I talk to the Trenton cops, and I just get a lot of information that comes in that somehow turns into a book.
I don't want my readers slowed down by long passages of narrative.
I took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying.
I've finally reached a stage in my career where I can do what I want.
I had done 12 little romance books, and I decided I wanted to move into crime fiction.
As writers, we all have an agenda, but if you recognize that agenda in a book, then you've failed.
Community, responsibility, flexibility, tenacity - these are all things that I imbue my characters with. They are basically good, nonjudgmental people who succeed at the end of the day, sometimes in spite of themselves.
There's just so much craziness out there in the world; it's like I couldn't fit them all in my books.
I love Sherri Shepherd as Lula.
What I do miss is the Jersey Shore.
I feel like I never would have been a success and gotten published without my family.
I'm a writer, but this is a business. You have to look at it in the way you would look at any business.
You have to have honesty to the product. You have to meet consumer expectations. You give them value for their money and give them a product that they need. I don't see anything wrong with all these things. And I don't think it's a bad thing to meet consumers' expectations.
Writing a graphic novel is hard. It feels closer to a screen play than to a novel.
'Troublemaker' is not an adaptation of 'Metro Girl' or 'Motor Mouth.' It is an original story. The hardest part was probably trying to keep the sound true to the novels. I always write in first person, and it was important to us that the readers of 'Metro' and 'Motor' be comfortable with the change over to a graphic novel.
Like 'Metro' and 'Motor,' 'Troublemaker' is written in first person. The only narration that happens is Barney speaking to the reader/thinking in her head. First person was a big challenge in the graphic novel because we want both men and women of all ages to enjoy 'Troublemaker.'
When I storyboard, they're just fragments of thoughts. I write in three acts like a movie, so I have my plot points up on the preliminary storyboard.
What I have to outline is action and plot because I'm not particularly good at that.
I know the relationships, and I already know my characters and how I'm going to reveal my characters to my readers - how I'm going to feed them information about that character. That stuff doesn't have to be in my outline.
I have people I love and trust on my team. And I'm lucky my family is incredibly talented in a variety of ways.
When I started writing, it felt good, and I knew I was in the right genre.
