Karin Slaughter
I taped the autopsy photos from Marilyn Monroe's death to my lunch box in fifth grade, and I would write stories in which someone inevitably died.Collection: Death
Libraries are the backbone of our education system.Collection: Education
It's a very Southern thing to be interested in dark stuff.
I have a superhero complex. If I see anything bad happen, I run towards it, rather idiotically because, after all, what could I do?
Flannery O'Connor was a revelation for me. When I read her, I was very young, and I didn't understand what she was doing. I didn't see the - any of the Catholicism or any of the social stuff.
I'm just not a crazy, stay-out-all-night sort of person. I love writing.
I don't get hung up a lot on angst.
I never really fitted in, because I've always been interested in really dark things.
My sister lived in England for a while when I was 12, and I came to visit her, and I spent most of the time in her flat reading.
Women who write thrillers are called 'dark.' Male writers are called 'powerful.'
In the South, we drink the Bible with our mother's milk.
When you write as a woman, there's this feeling there's going to be a softness.
You can take risks with the characters and their development in a standalone novel.
That's why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.
I always want to make sure the book I'm writing is the best book I can deliver.
I want to be a better writer. I want to learn and grow, to know how to tell stories in a different and more challenging way. I've learned it doesn't get easier each time. It actually gets harder.
What I know is the characters in a Southern town. I know the cadence of the language and the voice of Atlanta because I've lived here for so long. And I know the neighborhoods, and I hopefully know the people, and I feel a connection to them. And I also feel like I'm honoring them when I talk about them.
I always try to block out an hour or so a day to read. Being a writer is a job, and reading helps train my brain in the right direction.
Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.
A book I would take with me to a desert island is 'Paradise Lost,' which I studied in college and hated so much by the end of the class that I never wanted to see it again.
The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O'Connor's short story collection 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find.'
I hate to badmouth any book or writer, because I know how it feels to be on the other end of that.
As a writer, I've always felt it's my job to be extremely careful when writing about victims, especially women.
The familiar trope of the woman in peril doesn't really interest me.
As voters and taxpayers, we must demand that our local governments properly prioritize libraries. As citizens, we must invest in our library down the street so that the generations served by that library grow up to be adults who contribute not just to their local communities but to the world.
I love twins stories.
I think a lot of guys who are on the Internet a lot, they're kind of anesthetized to some of the violent language and all that because they see it all the time.
People don't just love mysteries. They are obsessed with them - especially the kind that are never definitively solved.
Crafting a piece of gripping, narrative true crime that engages the world is not that different from crafting a piece of crime fiction.
The most important lesson I have learned from spending years talking to law enforcement officers is that the vast majority of them really want to do a good job. They have a physical need to do a good job. And yet, we don't give them the resources that would help them.
My sister is dyslexic, and she's so smart, so intelligent in all of the ways that matter.
I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.
I write fifteen hours a day, stopping at Oprah-o'clock.
I'm going to name a name: Janet Evanovich. She writes the same book over and over, and I read every single one of them and eagerly anticipate them.
It's just my goal to deliver the best story I can, and I want to make sure each book is better than the last, and in order to do that, I have to take chances.
Men are more particular, and they're not going to grab something with a bodice-ripper cover on it.
Growing up in Georgia in the southeastern United States, I was always reading and always kept to myself. I never felt isolated, though; I just liked being alone.
I think some people are good at being alone, and some people aren't, and as a child, I really liked it.
I've always been drawn to dark stories. I enjoy reading Flannery O'Connor, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Mitchell.
I love reading almost as much as I love writing.
Most of my books begin with a nap on my couch here, when I dream up characters and story lines, and then I write on my laptop in the recliner and handle the business side of email at my desk, which is sagging in the middle - maybe from so many words?
Oh, I'm completely OCD about neatness.
It was always my dream to write for a living.
I always wanted to be a writer. In the beginning, I thought I had to rewrite 'Gone with the Wind,' but eventually, I found my way and realized that wasn't me.
I grew up reading thrillers. Honestly, I was always drawn to the very detailed ones like Patricia Cornwell. I love details.
If you're going to write thrillers, you have to make a decision if you are going to be realistic or go off and over.
Women know how to scare other women.
Anyone who's been to high school with teenage girls knows how horrible girls can be.
Southerners have this love of embellishment. Even when you read a police report, there's some backstory.
Random House is definitely invested in keeping libraries healthy.