When I began writing my first novel, I was blissfully ignorant of that sage piece of advice: Write what you know. I wasn't a cop, or a pathologist, or a special agent for the FBI. Besides a stint in the Marine Corp Reserve, I was, first, a secretary, then a stay-at-home housewife and mother who read. A lot. Mostly mysteries and suspense with an emphasis on private eye fiction. So it seemed perfectly natural to me that when one of my first short stories, A Change of Clients, appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 1974, it featured a private detective. My only concession to the write-what-you-know maxim was to make my detective a woman, because, well, I was one. It really... more
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