Did you always want to be a writer?
Pretty much. My mother has been reading a book a day since I was a little kid. She instilled in me a love of reading and writing at an early age. She always told me that being a writer was a noble calling. Then I won a school-wide writing contest when I was in the second grade and another in the fifth grade. I tried to convince myself over the years that I could do something else more practical with my life, but inventing stories and writing them down was the only thing I was ever good at. After a lot of soul searching I finally gave in and accepted it as my fate. I became a much happier person once I did.

What do you read?
I'm interested in other cultures, so I read quite a bit of anthropology and world history. I also enjoy non-fiction adventure. The Perfect Storm, books like that. In fiction, I'm a big fan of Jim Harrison, the novelist and poet. He's got this remarkable ability to paint entire worlds in a few swift sentences. He was the first modern writer to make me believe you could be someone in love with language while being a passionate story teller. In the thriller/mystery genre I'm a big fan of Dennis Lehane. I grew up outside of Boston and worked in the streets around Fenway Park as a teenager. Lehane completely captures the gritty side of the people and the city in a way that makes both the characters and the locale compelling and morally complex. I'm jealous of him.

What's your work schedule like?
I write five to six days a week, usually between 10 AM. and 6 PM. Early in my career I worked as a reporter and those were my hours. When I started writing novels, I tried to do what other novelists do - get up early and write first thing. It just never worked for me. So I finally abandoned that approach and returned to my old newspaper schedule. I work out early in the morning, usually climbing with my dogs in the mountains near my home in Montana. During the climb I think about the writing from the day before and the writing to come. I usually try to produce between five and seven pages a day.

How did your experience as an investigative reporter influence your work?
Working for a newspaper as an investigator taught me a lot about the way the world works and the thought process of people who break the law. I learned that no matter how heinous someone's actions might be, they always have a rationale for their deeds. They think they're doing the right thing. Being a reporter also taught me the importance of research and how to talk to people in a way that makes them comfortable enough to open up to me. I do a lot of reporting before I write, often immersing myself physically in a subject, but I try to follow E.L. Doctorow's advice to know enough about a subject to fire the imagination, but not so much that it throttles possibility. In the end writing fiction is a pack of lies well told. Despite the lengths I go to when researching my novels, I try not to lose sight of that.

The outdoors has obviously been a big influence in your life and writing.
Yeah. It's why I live in Montana. Ever since serving in the Peace Corps in West Africa, I've been an adventure junkie. I love seeing new places and pushing myself to the limit, whether it's heli-skiing in Alaska or tracking in remote areas populated by grizzlies and wolves or caving in Kentucky. These kinds of extreme experiences push me to write about the edge of human experience. These are the kinds of things that really interest me and seem to spur my imagination.

In almost all of your novels you've got strong female characters, either as the heroine or in powerful supporting roles. Why and how do you manage to write so convincingly from a feminine point of view?
There are more women alive than men, so it's always made sense to me to have women play a prominent role in my books. As a narrative artist it's also liberating to write from a woman's perspective. I have to really think and go for the less obvious plot turns when a women is the protagonist. The Purification Ceremony would have been a yawner if it had been written with a male hero. And the Labyrinth would have suffered if much of the book had not been told from Whitney and Cricket Burke's point of view. As far as writing convincingly as a woman, I tend to believe that men and women are more alike than Oprah would like us to think. Women just tend to take their emotions into account much more often than men. I'm constantly reminding myself of that. And when I can't figure out what a woman would do in a given situation, I ask the opinion of the important women in my life - my wife, Betsy, and my agents, Jo and Linda.

Cricket Burke, one of the heroines of LABYRINTH, is such an accurate depiction of a teenage girl - who was the inspiration for her?
Cricket was based on the daughter of one of my best friends. Pandi was fourteen at the time I started writing Labyrinth. She was extremely bright but not doing as well in school as her parents might have wished. She was a great athlete, very tough in competition, yet unsure of herself off the field or track. In many ways she was wise beyond her years, yet naïve about how tough life can become in the blink of an eye. I interviewed her several times during the early stages of crafting the novel and started to get a general idea about what it's like to be a fourteen-year-old girl. But it wasn't until I talked with her about what it might be like to have a mother so traumatized that she'd retreated into herself that the character of Cricket became clear to me. Pandi thought about my question and said she'd feel sorry for her mother, yet she'd also feel cheated at not having her there for guidance when she really needed it. Right then I realized what a difficult thing it is to be fourteen and female - no longer a girl, but not yet a woman. And the arc of Cricket's journey instantly crystallized for me.

All your books are so different. Where do you get your ideas?
In each novel I've started with a setting that I just found interesting or had experience with, then tried to twist it into the most intense experience possible. I've been a skier since I was a kid, which led to The Fall Line. My years as an investigative reporter gave me the background to write Hard News. I grew up in a deer hunting family, so I had the personal experience necessary to understand the mind of a tracker in The Purification Ceremony. I got interested in 19th century spiritualists because I lived down the street from the houses where the Eddys once lived and that gave rise to Ghost Dance. Caves have always struck me as terribly scary, dangerous and yet alluring. I think Labyrinth came out of that fear.

Despite the fact that your books are different they seem to share common themes.
True. From a global perspective I think I write about interesting cultures and the people who inhabit them. Extreme skiers. Reporters. Deer trackers. Cavers. And in the future, homicide detectives. On a more micro scale, I write about characters who are recovering from some kind of physical or psychological wound that forces them to face the past in a spiritual way. There's also the theme of isolation, of characters having to separate physically in order to recover psychologically. I really believe that the worst situations bring out the best in people.

Why thrillers and mysteries?
Those were the stories that came out of me when I sat down to write. I don't mean to be flip about it, but I think you're only capable of writing what naturally comes out of you. I'm an adventure freak in my personal life and because of that I'm attracted to stories where characters are pushed to their limits. Like Hemingway, I tend to think that people only reveal who they are and what they are capable of when they are forced to confront their greatest fears. Almost by definition that puts you in the realm of thrillers.

You write about so many horrifying, bone-chilling scenarios and you try to live them yourself before you write - what are you scared of?
Lots of stuff. Flying in airplanes. Roller coasters scare the crap out of me. So does riding on the back of motorcycles where other people are driving. I know if it was me driving the plane or the motorcycle I wouldn't have a problem because I'd be in control. But anytime I have to rely on other people's skills in dangerous situations, I get nervous. And any hint of threat to children frightens me to my core. I can't take reading about kids who get cancer or get kidnapped or molested. I have two young boys and it just hits too close to home.

You've been practicing Aikido, the Japanese martial art of self-defense for twenty years. How does that influence your writing?
On a practical level, I suppose Aikido has helped me to choreograph some pretty solid fight scenes in my novels. On a more spiritual plain, Aikido influences my writing in the same ways being a deep powder skier and a deer tracker have. Writing, Aikido, skiing, tracking, these are crafts that are best learned and mastered over long periods of time. You learn to be patient being a martial artist. You learn to work at it every day, honing your abilities, forgetting about goals, focusing on process. You learn to accept the fact that you won't get figure it out in one year or even ten. Writing and Aikido are life-long paths and that's the point. I know I've got a lot of books in me and with luck and God's help I'll get better with each one.

Which book would you love to see made into a movie?
I think I write viscerally enough that all my books could be adapted to film. But only two of them have been bought so far. Scott Rudin, the great producer, is going to make Labyrinth into a movie. Caves and cavers have intrigued him for years and I think he'll do a great job of bringing the intense world of the underground to the screen. And we recently finished negotiations with Remstar, a Canadian film company, to do a film version of The Purification Ceremony. The deal calls for me to be on the set during production as a technical advisor to make sure the deer tracking scenes are shot correct.

What's next?
A different turn for me: a series of novels based on the homicide unit at the San Diego Police Department. Each novel will force the detectives to confront and understand a different culture in order to solve the mystery. I'm very excited about it. The first book is done and will be published in August 2003. I'm hard at work on the second installment.

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