Frequently Asked Questions of April

A. The book, which has the working title of The Girl in the Mini Cooper, was inspired by a real-life case that happened nearly 30 years ago. A man ordered some pizzas to be delivered to what turned out to be a false address. He asked if "the girl in the orange Volkswagen" was working delivery that night and was told a different girl was. That girl's car was later found with the keys in the ignition and the pizzas and her hat on the ground. Her body was never found.

The parents hired a psychic, who zeroed in on a young man who owned a truck similar to one that had been seen in the vicinity. Right after that man talked to the psychic, he killed himself, never revealing where he had left the delivery girl's body. For years, the case was considered closed — until another man, already in prison, confessed to the murder. The man who committed suicide had nothing to do with it. I was always fascinated by this twist, and decided to write a book with a better outcome than the real story. I also wondered how it would feel to know that you were the girl the killer asked for first. In high school, I worked at Pietros Pizza, so I drew on that experience for real-life details.

A. A couple of years ago, I took part in the FBI Citizen's Academy, which is a 10-week course taught by real FBI agents. The last day was spent on the gun range. (I even have pictures of myself firing a submachine gun.) Despite my day on the range, I still turn to a couple of gun experts I know when I have questions about how a certain firearm would work and how much damage it would do.

I've had my daughter duct tape my hands behind me and help me mix up fake blood.

I collect sources the way some people collect bottle caps. Current and retired FBI agents have helped me with research, including how dye packs and flash-bangs work. I can also turn to a retired cop, and another cop who is a criminalist - I met him when he came to check for fingerprints when our house was burglarized. I just had lunch with a guy who was the bodyguard for a former head of the State Department, and I'm sure I'll write about a bodyguard sometime. I know prosecutors, judges, psychologists, doctors - even a death investigator who is more than happy to brainstorm about how to kill someone. At a recent law enforcement luncheon, I met an ATF agent, a DEA supervisor, and a postal inspector and tucked their cards away. And I have a bunch of reference books, including a manual for homicide investigators that contains some photos I wish I had never, ever seen.

In the fall of 2010, I plan on attending a special police academy for writers held on the grounds of a real police academy. The courses will include training in weapons, handcuffs, fingerprinting, and crime scene reconstruction.

A. That partnership has worked out well for both of us, as shown by our first book landing on the New York Times bestseller list. Lis brings her experiences as a federal prosecutor, reporter, and daughter of an FBI agent. I bring my skills at crafting a compelling narrative. We text or email each other nearly every day, batting ideas back and forth.

A. Yes. Here are links to some articles. The first is the article that inspired me to write Shock Point.

New York Times article that started it all http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/09/world/parents-shopping-for-discipline-turn-to-harsh-programs-abroad.html?scp=1&sq=%22Ryan+Fraidenburgh%22&st=nyt

One parent's story http://www.helpyourteens.com/true_story.php

London Observer story about Jamaica's Tranquility Bay http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/jun/29/schools.uk1

New York Times story about Tranquility Bay
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/world/parents-divided-over-jamaica-disciplinary-academy.html?scp=5&sq=%22tranquility%20bay%22&st=cse

A. My fiction always has a healthy percentage of facts. Girl, Stolen began with a story I saw in the local news. A blind girl was with her mom and decided not to go into a store where her mom was making a quick stop. Her mom left the keys in the ignition in case she wanted to listen to the radio. A man came along, saw the keys, jumped into the car, drove off - and then realized there was a girl in the back seat. He forced her out of the car at a Jack in the Box three blocks away.

But I thought, "What if he had kept her? And what if the thief was a teenager too? And what if his dad was running a chop shop for stolen cars? And what if they thought about letting her go - until they learned she was the daughter of Nike's president?"

To research the book, I read a lot of autobiographies written by people who had gone blind. Through them, I learned how important guide dogs are to many blind people, so I spent a day at Guide Dogs for the Blind in Boring, Oregon. They even put a blindfold on me and brought out a dog for me to harness and walk. It's very hard to do that if you have never seen the dog or the harness, but I finally managed. Then I tried to pat the dog on the head - and realized I had harnessed the tail end.

I also corresponded with a high school girl who was going to a mainstream school. And I sent the whole book to a blind woman who has a radio program about books and who has strong feelings about how blind people are portrayed in the media. She had her computer read it to her and caught some typos. So Girl, Stolen was actually proofread by a blind person!

There's a twist at the end of Girl, Stolen that a 9-1-1 supervisor helped me come up with - but I can't give it away.

A. They most certainly are, and I encourage you to try them out. Like Cassidy, Allison and Nicole, be sure to leave room for a decadent dessert.

A. We certainly had no shortage of real life stories to work from there. The obvious one is Chandra Levy/Gary Condit, but there was also Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton, underage pages/Mark Foley, and 14-year-old babysitter/former Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt.

A. Since Lis spent eight years working side by side with Bill O'Reilly on The Radio Factor, the publisher suggested we begin a book by murdering a talk show host. Bill even weighed in on how he wanted the guy to die. But the radio host is not based on any one person. In fact, we sprinkled in clues pointing to nearly a dozen real life talk show radio hosts. See if you can spot them all.

A. I'm sorry, but for legal reasons, I do not read or accept story ideas.

A. Once again, I can't. I get too many requests like this to be able to fulfill them and keep up with my own work.

A: There is no best way and no magic answers to these questions. You should consider joining the Mystery Writers Of America, Sisters in Crime, or the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. These organizations exist to help writers. They have symposiums and conferences annually. They offer e-mail lists for writers to discuss subjects like getting published, finding an agent, etc. They are a great resource. There are also numerous web sites available for writers.

A. Only 45 percent of fourth graders and 19 percent of eighth graders read daily for fun. The average kid spends 6.5 hours a day in front of a screen: TV, video, computer or Game Boy.

• Be one yourself. Make sure your child sees you read every day.
• Read your child stories. Make reading aloud part of your daily ritual, even after your child can read on her own.
• Encourage your child to ask questions about the book you are reading to him, and ask them yourself. "What do you think will happen now?"
• When your child reads to you, be patient, listen attentively and don't correct too often.
• Keep new reading material coming. Make regular trips to the bookstore or library. Get your child his own library card or even a magazine subscription.
• Expand your child's vocabulary by explaining new words you come across when reading together.
• Have children practice reading to younger siblings or even pets.
• Pick books at the right level, because material that's too hard can be discouraging.
• Be aware of what your child enjoys. If she likes an author, help her find more of that author's work. Encourage her to explore subjects that interest her.

A. No, although I have been called back in for further testing. The man who needed a transplant lived back East and was in his forties. Unfortunately, I did not match. Being tested to be a bone marrow donor is as simple as giving blood, and being an actual donor is not much more complicated. If you are interested,go to http://www.marrow.org. Your bone marrow reflects your genetic heritage, and there is a huge need for minority donors.

A. I wish I could say yes, but my "overnight success" was built on three previous novels that never found a publisher. For these, I garnered over a hundred rejection slips, first from agents and then, once I found an agent, from publishers. During this time I met other talented writers who gave up after a handful of rejections. I decided to persevere. I truly believe that tenacity is as important as talent.

A. Yes. In September of 1999, after a long dry summer, a farmer was plowing his wheat fields in Eastern Oregon on a blue-sky day. A freak wind whipped up and dust covered the roadway. Instantly, everything went black. Later, they found people dead in smashed cars with the cruise controls still set at 75 miles an hour. One person involved in the accident tried to go back to warn others. He waved at them, but the passing drivers either just waved back or gave him the finger. The last sight the young man had of one trucker was the trucker driving full bore into the dust storm, both hands off the wheel as he waved at the young man. The dust storm caused several chain reaction car accidents. I combined them into one.

A. When I began writing the book, I had a character who was a generic patrol cop. After we were burglarized in August of 2000, a criminalist came to our house to take fingerprints. He was so interesting that I ended up changing my patrol cop into a criminalist. That night, he showed me all the contents of his kit and taught me how to dust for fingerprints. Later I interviewed him to learn more about his job and why he had chosen it.

When I first entered our house after the burglary, I rationalized what I saw. All the doors and cupboards gaped open, but it was a Friday and our house often looks especially messy on a Friday. Our new phone was gone, but perhaps my husband had taken it with him when he left for work for some reason. The further in the house I got, though, the more I knew something was wrong.

I called 911 on my cell phone from the porch. While I was out there, some boys pulled up in our neighbor's driveway and stared at me. I noticed them because our neighbors are Cambodian, as are all their visitors, and these boys were white with backwards baseball caps. I thought I would remember their license plate, but I didn't. So the first lesson I learned was to write down anything you think might be important. Because an unrelated murder had happened shortly before, the cops were slow in responding. My husband got home before they did.

The burglars had left a walkie-talkie behind, one of those sets that people sometimes buy to keep track of their children at malls. The cop said they no longer had to rely on the lookout on the corner whistling to warn them. He took the walkie-talkie with him to see if it could be fingerprinted. Later, the cop stormed back into the driveway, shouting "Have those jerk-offs been here?" I thought that wasn't a very professional way to refer to his fellow officers, but it turned out he meant the burglars, not the criminalist. It seems the burglars had discovered the loss of their walkie-talkie and were taunting us on it, saying "We took your fax machine. We took your camera," in a song-song voice. If that wasn't enough of a clue that our burglars were probably just out of school for the summer, there was also the fact that among the items they stole was a box of Trix cereal.

Another lesson I learned is to walk through your house with a video camera, lingering on all of your CDs, and then take the video and put it someplace else, like at your office. Not only would this have provided proof of what we lost, it also would have helped us remember what we had to replace. A year and a half later, my husband is still remembering the titles of stolen CDs.

Here are some other lessons I learned:- Burglars will steal your suitcases so they can use them to carry away your stuff.- According to the criminalist, burglars avoid houses with neatly trimmed hedges. You can now put a level on top of our hedge.- It's a lot harder to recover decent finger prints from a crime scene than you might think.- I asked the criminalist if they had a special way to deal with fingerprint powder that got on their clothes. He said, "Yes. It's called throwing them away." This is why criminalists often dress in black.

A. In a mystery, the reader discovers, along with the sleuth, who the killer or the do-er of the evil deed is. In a thriller, the story question is—will the main character make it out alive?

A. In real life, the motive for murder is often banal or springs from so much craziness that we'll never understand it. Killers aren't brought to justice, or when they are, they are revealed to be pathetic losers or psychopaths. Novels make more sense than real life, which is why we read them. In a mystery, you can imagine yourself matching wits with the killer, get a little frightened, be relieved when justice is served, and then close the covers and go off to bed. All that being said, most writers I know told me that they were sticking to "comfort reads" in the weeks immediately following Sept. 11.