I have a standing ban on my books with my Mom. Why? My mom is a devout Christian and while I still consider myself a person of faith, I know that the things I write about and that she’s not cool with. Also, dude… She’s my mom. She’d wash my mouth out with soap at most of my books and well, lets face it, she’d seriously consider scrubbing my brain as well. Because, well… I’m not exactly what you’d call a good girl. Sure, you might not know it from the look of me. I’m very big on manners and being polite and being responsible and other junk like that. But secretly (sorta), I have other interests. I love a good rowdy tale. I grew up with chain smoking, hard-talking, rough-walking women. Strong women who also happened to enjoy being women. And I often wondered why I didn’t see them in my books very often. I don’t relate well to the innocent Mary-Sues who never see a good murder coming. And I can’t stand a useless heroine who throws herself in front of an enemy gun just for the heck of it. I love a good adventure, a heart pumping…

I was about 10 years old when I first plotted my sister’s death. She had eaten the tips of my chocolate bunny ears following the Easter Bunny’s visit and I was enraged. I was beyond consolation. I needed was revenge. And so, I lay in my bed and plotted out how I would destroy her. If memory serves, it was brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, I told my sister all about it the next day. That’s right. I told her how she would meet her untimely demise. Not nearly so impressed, she said, “You’re sick and I’m telling.” But to my delight, my mom was just as impressed as me. She did take a moment to tell me that my chocolate bunny was just chocolate and that I shouldn’t … blah, blah … the point here is that my mother agreed with me that my plans to annihilate my sister were both methodical and genius. At age 12, we lived in Moscow, Russia and there was no television. I was missing all the good stuff (like the Dukes of Hazzard), so it was up to me to make up stories during our hour-long bus rides to the Anglo-American school. Too…