I have thirteen-year-old twin girls, the younger of whom has autism. I am the world's worst housewife, nicknamed by my spouse "a lighting rod for entropy in the universe." I have recently taken to calling him "my first husband."

I like to read a lot, being especially fond of the backs of cereal boxes and badly garbled assembly instructions written by persons for whom English is not the language of choice (although my all-time favorite bit of writing was contained in the song list on a bootleg Dylan tape in Hong Kong, which claimed "Bowling in the Wind" was the first cut on side A).

For the last several generations, my family's motto has been "Never a Dull Moment." None of us know how you would say this in Latin.

I subscribe to my sister's gustatory philosophy, which is that "there are two kinds of food in the world: food that's good, and food that needs more salt."

I am currently an Edgar nominee in the best first novel category. It is kind of nice not knowing how that's going to turn out in the end. My first novel is A Field of Darkness. It has been called both "a venomously witty portrait of a fallen WASP" and "absolute bollocks," though not by the same publication.

My two favorite songs are Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams" and that little bit of Bach that Glenn Gould plays right when the Tralfamadorians are coming out of the stars to kidnap Billy Pilgrim and his old dog Spot in the movie version of Slaughterhouse Five. The Rolling Stones doing "King Bee" get an honorable mention.

I would like to be Winston Churchill when I grow up.