"I was interested in this phenomenon. How had it happened? I asked her a lot of questions, and then I became more interested and I interviewed some more people who worked as paralegals. And none of them were happy.
      "Now, I believe that a mystery writer goes to an emotional refrigerator to get material for a book, just like a cook goes to a kitchen refrigerator to get ingredients for a meal.
      "So, there was a lot of emotional material there.
      "I admit that I was naïve about law firms. After reading John Grishom, I thought that working at a law firm would be exciting, filled with people looking for justice, seeped in suspense.
      "It's not.
      "I started by interviewing lawyers. I asked, 'what happens to a will after someone dies?' And I would hear: 'blah blah blah' until my eyes were rolling back in my head. 'what happens when someone changes their will?' 'blah blah blah.' Lord it was boring. So pretty soon I thought, I couldn't possibly write the book about this because it would put people to sleep. It's just not going to work.

      "It was similar to the genesis of my book Deep Cut. I came up with the title first. I loved that title. So I went to the cattlemen's association and I asked about cattle ranching. Oh no. Talking to the ranchers was like talking to the lawyers. 'blah blah blah.' I thought, no way is this going to work.
      "So I went to see my friend the librarian in Evergreen, and she looked up the words 'Prime Cut' for me. The words could apply to the history of meat packing. Um, no. So we looked on. Then she found, 'male physical fitness, ages 18- 24.' Oh yeah. That's something I'll be checking out.
      "I called a models' agent and asked her, 'do models actually eat?' and she said, 'they're pigs.'
      "'No!' I said. "'Last week,' she told me, 'I watched a model scarf down 50 brownies in a single sitting.'
      "Somebody had to cater that.
      "I flew to New York, and I stayed with a friend and put together a whole bunch of snacks and goodies and I went to do some research. I arrived at an agency one morning just on time for what they called a 'cattle call.' Hmmmm?
      "The first person I met was the casting director. She looked me up and down and said, 'hah! You are not looking for work as a model.' "Okaaaaaaay. Back to her later.

      "Well, so now I had the experience of Prime Cut behind me, and I'm thinking about the law and paralegals and I'm looking for something emotionally resonant. I finally asked someone the right question. I asked, 'what happens to the stuff in the house after the death but before the will is read.'
      "'Oh,' my lawyer interviewee said. 'we call that the race to the house.'
      "'It's a race?'
      "'It's crazy. That's when the heirs and some who are not heirs are breaking into the home, because they can take items before the inventory is made that gets filed with the court. We have a saying, "where there's a will, there's a relative."'
      "Well, hey! I have an emotional ingredient for my book.

      "Now, my agent has always said, 'I want you to put a body on the first page.' And I've never been able to do it. It means you have to go back then and retroactively explain everything, why and how the body got dead. Well, I couldn't do it until this one, Dark Tort:
      "'I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt at half past ten on the night of October 19.'
      "What held my interest in developing and writing this book was art history. I used my college major in this book. I got interested in art in college. I majored in political science at Wellesley and transferred with that major to Stanford. I went to a friend's class in art history on a lark. I was sitting in that class for just a few minutes, and I thought, 'uh oh, I've had the wrong major all along.' I changed to art history immediately.
      "Now, as I go around the country meeting with food writers, I learn that the vast majority are art history majors. How odd is that? Think about it. They all became art history majors so they could go to the museums and sit in the little cafes in the museum district and be served attractive dishes, full of texture and flavor and aromas, and they say to themselves, hey! I could write about this! They love to write about the beauty of food.
      "I've discovered that mystery reading isn't a favorite hobby of art historians. But it is the favorite hobby of clergy. Episcopal Bishop William Frye said in an interview that this makes perfect sense. 'After all,' he said, 'in mysteries, the bad guy is always punished. But unfortunately, he said, in my business the villain is always forgiven.'

      "OK, so I had my ingredients: the race to the house, the wills, the paralegals. At law firms, when I would go in there to meet someone to interview, everyone was very polite. I mean, exceedingly polite. Painfully polite. But underneath, there would be the rage and disappointment and ill-will that there is everywhere. Just do a little digging.
      "And the second ingredient: I had art history. I could write about some pieces of art that had been stolen.
      "And the third ingredient: the food. I thought it an interesting statistic that cookbooks are bestsellers today because no one cooks anymore. People need the books for instruction.
      "Years ago, wives got together and exchanged recipes. I got married in 1969, so I'm of that generation. You all met up and shared information about dishes and cooking and how to make things.
      "Well, a while ago I had an intense emotional reaction to something that reminded me of this time and how we didn't buy cookbooks back then. A neighbor called to give me a favorite chocolate cake recipe. I wrote down all the ingredients, the cocoa, the sugar, the flour, etc, and then I said, wait, something's missing. 'No, that's it,' she said. 'No, something's missing - water is missing. I know this recipe. It takes water.' And suddenly I had this very emotional memory, a memory of the time when we would get together as wives in the '70s and exchange recipes, and the bitches in the group would always leave out one ingredient. Just one. To make you crazy, trying to figure out why your dish wouldn't turn out right.
      "So I thought, what would happen if Goldy had to make a recipe by a famous artist who died and it flopped because the bitch left out an ingredient. Well, my feeling is that her reaction would be like mine was when I was confronted by that casting director at the modeling agency in New York City: 'You Are So Dead.'

      "Now, in 1969 I got married in the Naval Academy Chapel. It was a big deal. I was in love with Jim, very much in love with him. But the night before, I was crying. I told him 'I can't marry you! I just can't!' So here's Jim, trying to comfort his fiancée the night before the wedding, 'what is it? You can tell me.' And I threw myself sobbing at him: 'I can't cook!'
      "The sweetheart. He said it was OK. Really OK. We married, we moved to Houston, and I tried. I really did. I bought a steak and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour. Because that's how you cook everything, right? Jim stayed supportive, and I kept trying.
      "I finally learned to cook because I watched Julia Child every single day. And I read the Sunset Books series of cookbooks. But mostly it was Julia. She taught me how to make a rue, how to make chicken stock. All the basics. I've had to buy her French Chef twice because mine would just fall apart from use.

      "In terms of putting manuscripts together, I was in a critique group. So for my first book, Catering to Nobody, Goldy was a small, bit player at first. My writing group said, this caterer is your main character. They pushed for her.
      "So I called a caterer I knew and I said 'I'll work for you for free if you show me the business.' I thought, how bad can it be? Hah! Did I learn. And I'd already at that point learned to cook and I had learned to create recipes on my own. Learning the business was a whole new education.
      "So then my writing group said, put the recipes in the book.
      "My publisher didn't like it. Said the recipes were intrusive, and that no one was doing it. I stuck to it. I reminded the publisher that it had been done before. I'm very glad I won that battle.
      "It's a challenge to stay fresh. But the ideas come from everywhere.
      "I went to get a makeover at a cosmetics counter. The cosmetician who was putting on my makeup said to me, 'I could tell stories about this place' . . . and I ended up with Killer Pancake.
      "I go where the material takes me. In Dark Tort, when Goldy trips over the paralegal, and she looks up and sees a painting by her friend, then she starts wondering why these people are friends.
      "And once the ingredients are all there, I can write with freedom. The plot is all the ingredients, and then I can just have fun and write about the people. Goldy stays in character through all the books. She's got enough nuance in her character that I can see her as real and think about how she will react in any given situation.
      "Jim and I have been married for a long time and I've had a happy marriage, but I'd been a volunteer counselor. I've learned a lot about the places folks come from. I wanted to create a character who had come out of very difficult situations. Goldy is that. Of course, when I first was writing her, it was pre-O.J., and pre-domestic violence awareness to a large degree. No one was writing fiction about domestic abuse. But it made Goldy who she is.

      "Sometimes I go down the wrong road with my research. It happens. For instance the amount of time I spent on cattle rustling as a potential plot for Deep Cut. It was a colossal waste of time. My recipe research takes a lot of twists and turns, too!
      "I've had lots of flops. My family has had to live with them. I once tried to make a blue cheese pizza. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but it was a disaster. A great big mouthful of Roquefort is not ever a good idea. But I try things all the time. I come up with ideas and I experiment, or I find things at restaurants and then figure out my own recipe at home. For instance I dragged my husband to the Palomino Grill in Denver over and over and over again so I could learn how to make their mushroom salad. Every time I ordered it I got closer to figuring it out.
      "So, for Dark Tort I had to find out what lawyers eat. I went to a caterer who makes lunch every day for a group of day traders. These folks never get to leave their desks. She puts together a complete lunch for them every day and she makes sure everyone has their individual tastes met. She makes sure they have balanced meals. They need protein. They want sandwiches.
      "So, I decided I had to figure out how to get chickpeas into a high protein bread. I experimented, let me tell you. Finally I came up with a good-tasting bread that contains chickpeas. It's a complete protein in the bread. The recipe is in the book.
      "I admit, I love to do research. If you have a foundation in a humanities degree, you learn how to learn. I know how to do research. It's fun for me. And of course, mystery readers will really spank you if you get police procedure wrong - or anything, for that matter. The scrutiny is intense. I spend a lot of time on the phone with the sheriff's office. Oh, yeah, they know me.
      "I do hands-on research for every book. The big question really becomes how do you get to the writing since the research can be so distracting!

      "My average day? Well, I'm a natural early riser, and I like to read first thing every morning. I believe that reading is a cure for writer's block. It's inspirational. There are so many good books out there to read. So every morning I get up, make a latte for myself and read a while.
      "Then I try to do some exercise. I walk a couple of miles at least. I do try to be at my desk by 9 a.m.
      "I have a page quota that I set for myself each day. The number of pages depends on what's happening in the book at the time. Sometimes it's 10 pages and sometimes it's a difficult scene and it's just a couple of pages. But every night I have to email my writing buddy - she knows what each day's goal is - and I say, I've got it done. This keeps me on track, and my writing buddy will let me know if I've let her down!
      "I schedule necessary errands for the afternoon - doctor's appointments, store runs, whatever. And I love to make dinner, of course. I love to cook for my husband, Jim. He's retired now, but he's such a jock and works it off every day. I'm the one who has to deal with casting directors saying, 'hey, you're not going to be a model!'
      "No, it's folks like that who are inspirational to me. Remember, 'You Are So Dead.'
      "I met someone like that recently. I was in the quiet room of my local library, where no cell phones are allowed and there signs are up reminding people to be quiet. I was doing research and I was concentrating. So this large bald guy came in to the quiet room, and he was talking very loudly on his cell phone. He went on and on. After a while I was irritated enough that I reminded him it was the quiet room. He told me to shut up. He yelled at me. So I went and got the librarian. Then he hides his cell phone and yells at me that he hadn't been talking on the phone and said I was calling him a liar. It was ridiculous.
      "The confrontation ended; I went back to research; and then he comes back. He stands over my desk and leans in, putting his hands on my papers and scattering them about. He says to me, 'you were rude, you were unacceptable. I was on an important call!' I didn't respond and he got angrier and angrier. He made me really nervous.
      "He finally left, but by then I was scared. I knew I'd have to go past this guy to get to my car. I went to the ladies room and called my husband, and then I called 911. I called the sheriff's office. 'Oh yes, we know who you are,' the dispatcher said. She sent a sheriff's car to the library. They escorted me to my car. 'Oh yes, we know who you are,' they said.
      "So, here's your first clue as to what's in my next book. Who is this bald guy? What's he doing in the library? He is soooo dead!