Quotes from Chelsea Cain

My husband and I were excited about having a kid - it was having a baby that had us worried. We had a lot to learn, so like good liberal arts graduates, we signed up for a class.

As a seven-year-old, I remember when Etan Patz disappeared and was immortalized as the first missing-child face on a milk carton.

Don't let your characters tell you what to do. They can be pushy. Some writers say that they create characters and then just sort of follow them around through the narrative. I think that these writers are out of their minds.

I was born in Iowa City and spent my early childhood on a hippie commune just outside of town.

I'm usually too shy to write on planes because I assume that everyone on board is as nosy as I am and will look over my shoulder and read what I'm writing.

I've always been more interested in what happens after the bad thing has happened - the fallout of the bad thing, when people are already damaged. I'm less interested in seeing people when they're fine and following their journey to becoming damaged.

I felt like I'd culturally arrived when a character on the HBO show 'True Blood' was reading a hardback of 'Heartsick' at Sookie's kitchen table.

Memory is a fiction we tell ourselves: just a piece of the truth.

I was obsessed with Val McDermid's Tony Hill and Carol Jordan books, delightfully twisted stuff.

I like signing books for a living; I do. But you have no idea the panic that sets in. I am not a very good speller. Put me in a stresser situation, and I lose all capacity to recall how to spell the most simple names.

I read a lot of 'Nancy Drew' books as a kid and considered myself a bit of an amateur detective.

I often keep my eyes open for bodies. I do. Ever since I was a kid. I think I read too many 'Nancy Drew' books.

I love to write just about more than anything, but there are times I have to force myself to sit down and work. I want to play with my daughter or watch a movie with my husband or go outside on the nicest day of the year. But if writing is going to be your job, you have to treat it like a job.

Josie, like Gretchen, isn't afraid of blood. What woman would be?

I know that there's a cultural expectation that women be nurturing, delicate flowers. And I am. So delicate. But that doesn't mean I can't write a good, gory murder scene.

I think of it as the lasagna approach to writing because I'm always adding layers. I'll sometimes do it layer by layer, with dialogue, attribution, action, objects in the scene, setting... It can be sometimes that delineated.

Robbins had opened Gabby up. Her charred skin was peeled back, and her ribs were removed. She was pink inside, like steak that had been burned on a high heat but remained raw in the middle.

Gretchen's eyes blazed at Henry. 'Don't ever think you can know what I'll do

We lie to each other all the time, remember?' she said with an amused smile. 'Tell me,' Archie said, 'and I'll believe you.

Susan was already rehearsing excuses in case she was caught: I just got my period and I was looking for a tissue to stuff in my underpants. Men didn't question menstruation stories. Ever. You could probably get into the White House if you said you needed a tampon ASAP.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. —Bruce Lee

No duh, Susan said. You are like a walking vault of things you don't tell people. People who have secrets should pay you to hold on to them for them. You could be like a secret bank.

She'd liked Pearl. Pearl hadn't meant to Tazer Archie. Well, she meant to Tazer him, but how was she supposed to know that her then-boyfriend was going to drag Archie away, suspend him naked from meat hooks and try to hack him up with an ax? Hadn't everyone had a bad boyfriend at some point? Pearl had made some bonehead choices, but she had a good heart.

maybe the reason we all picture serial killers as schlubby, middle-aged white guys is because they are the ones who get caught.