Call me a lucky nomad. I’m originally from Northern California, but I’ve lived in cities as far flung as New York, Tokyo, and Seattle. My biggest regret? It’s hard to keep a library when you move so much.
My desire to write started in elementary school but my career began in earnest in Tokyo, where I landed a job with the Japanese edition of Reader’s Digest. As an editor, I had the privilege of working with former KGB agent Stanislav Levchenko on a book about his life as a spy.
Soon thereafter, an incredible story hit headlines: A woman in California had been kidnapped and held captive—most of the time in a box—for over seven years. It’s such a harrowing story that I felt compelled to fly home and cover the kidnapper’s trial. I later wrote PERFECT VICTIM in collaboration with the prosecutor. The book was put on the reading list for the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit and became a #1 New York Times bestseller.
Do I have an abnormal interest in the nature of evil? Maybe so, because I next wrote about a Sacramento landlady who was secretly murdering her tenants and planting them in her yard. DISTURBED GROUND is the true story of Dorothea Puente’s astonishing life, crimes, and nine-murder-count trial.
During the years between writing true crime to writing fiction, I wrote long and short articles, worked for the San Jose Mercury News, and earned my Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Vermont.
When I started writing THE EDGE OF NORMAL, I felt I’d come full circle, because my first true crime book provided the inspiration. The protagonist of my debut novel is a 22-year-old survivor of kidnapping and captivity. Reeve LeClaire (aka, Edgy Reggie) is flawed, persistent, and suffers from a hot sense of justice. She’s also the heroine of WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER, the sequel.
What’s next? I’m finishing another novel—naturally! Meanwhile, I teach writing workshops, speak at conferences, and write articles, usually about the writing craft or the criminal mind. (You can click on the BLOG tab to find my posts on Goodreads. And here’s a piece I wrote for TheAtlantic.com: Can Psychopaths Be Rehabilitated?)
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