MEGAN ABBOTT

I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.

I think it was Freud who said that we're all arrested at a certain age. For me, it was always 13.

I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing.

I think there are two prevailing views of the suburbs in the States: either they're this sort of tedious place, where everyone is the same, buys the same food and drives around in their little minivans, or the view is that the suburbs are extremely perverse in a humorous way.

I'm ashamed how little science fiction I've read.

I think watching TV has influenced my books, but I don't think writing TV has.

It feels like breaking rules is almost a given now on TV.

I don't think I could write a book that had an ideological plan going in - I think that would be a terrible book.

Reading Dorothy B. Hughes's novel 'In a Lonely Place' for the first time is like finding the long-lost final piece to an enormous puzzle. Within its Spanish bungalows, its eucalyptus-scented shadows, you feel as though you've discovered a delicious and dark secret, a tantalizing page-turner with sneakily subversive undercurrents.

When 'Dare Me' was first in development, it was hard to make the case for why it'd be interesting to anybody other than teenage girls. It'd often be treated, like, on first glance, 'What is this? 'Pretty Little Liars?' 'Mean Girls?'' It never was that.

Novels are so interior and idiosyncratic and such a solitary process.

I am an insomniac. I wake up at 6 or 6:30 and get out of bed immediately. The coffee starts right away. Then I get to the computer as quickly as possible. I like to start writing when I'm still half-asleep, in a state between dreaming and waking.

If I have a writing problem, the minute I step away, there's a solution.

The speed of the TV stuff vs. the self-imposed pace of novel writing has been a big adjustment, and going back and forth often feels like whiplash.

There's this notion of women's bodies being out of control - so out of control that men don't understand it at all.

I thought labs were such cinematic, spooky spaces.

Before I write, I like to read obits in 'The Times' because they're well written, and I like the little details. It gets the energy going in the morning. I really like the obits of old Hollywood actors and actresses.

I come from a family of readers. Our house smelled of book.

In the world of book writing, there's a few people, maybe, where you have close relationships. In TV, there are so many more relationships, and they're all so critical.

I'm always fascinated by how different writers' rooms work.

I never quite know how to fill that anxious, semi-wasted time before a midday flight home.

I'm always surprised at the negative response to the women in my books who are openly ambitious or experience aggression.

I've consumed true crime since first discovering 'Helter Skelter' by Vincent Bugliosi in a used bookstore at age 9 or 10 and staring in fascination and horror at the crime-scene photos in the middle.

I've come to believe that what draws women to true crime tales is an instinctual understanding that this is the world they live in.

True crime has long been a passion for me, but I'm also a sucker for biographies, particularly of politicians, writers, or Hollywood icons.