If you want to be an anthropologist, you need to study physical anthropology specialized in bones. If you want to be a forensic chemist, get a degree in chemistry. Do you want to do DNA work? Get a degree in microbiology. And do well. Study hard and go to graduate school.
Kathy Reichs
People love to hate the gravedigger.
My first book was the most successful debut novel in the U.K. ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the U.K. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.
I do interviews and signings and readings and all of these people just hang off my every word. And then I go home and have dinner with my family and nobody lets me get a word in.
Murder mysteries are puzzles that are fun to resolve.
At first I probably seem very abrupt, but I like efficiency. There's work and there's play, and I always think: 'Let's get the work over with so we can thoroughly enjoy the play.'
I originally worked as an archaeologist in North Carolina, and when bones were found police would take them out to the bones lady at the university, and that was me.
Bones tell me the story of a person's life - how old they were, what their gender was, their ancestral background.
What gives my books authenticity is that I actually do what it is I'm writing about. I think the fact that I am in the autopsy room, I go to the crime scene and I do work in the lab gives my books this flavor that otherwise they wouldn't have.
I've never lost my capacity to be shocked.
One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that.
I was a university professor, I could talk on and on and on. Give me a podium and you have to drag me off with a hook.
You'd be naive if you think you are going to retain any control once you option a character to TV.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
I've been accused of being a minimalist writer. I don't like a lot of verbiage in there.
Many fiction writers who put the science in don't get it right.
I work with the dead, but I am working for the living.
I tend to watch a lot of movies at home. It's nice to be close to the refrigerator with my pyjamas on and just relax.
