"Not very much," Reichs said.  "I introduced Tempe as a current character, describing her personality traits, as well as her job as a forensic anthropologist, her role at the lab, her reasons for being in Montreal.  I did give her the crumbling marriage and rebellious daughter as recent backstory, and did allude, cryptically, to a colorful part of her past involving an overly close relationship with alcohol."

From another angle, the series character presents a challenge. How do you keep her fresh from book to book? Reichs did not hesitate. "Avoid doing serial killer after serial killer!"

Then, more sedately, she added,  "Seriously, each story looks at violence from a different perspective:  due to individual psychopathology (Deja Dead), due to collective  sociopathology (Death du Jour), for profit (Deadly Decisions).  And each has a different message:  the misery caused by genocide (Grave Secrets), the cruelty of trafficking in endangered species (Bare Bones), the danger of fanatic religious beliefs (Cross Bones).   Also, the characters, and their relationships, must keep evolving, or the reader must continue to learn more and more about them.  And the settings, seasons, and crime details change, of course."

Reichs has enjoyed progressive growth as a writer, and an ever expanding readership. So what has she learned about the craft over the course of her writing career?

"For the first books I did full chapter by chapter outlines," Reichs said. "I don't do that anymore, but use a more free-flow approach.  Also, I believe my writing style has become more polished, more economical, with less use (abuse?) of similes and metaphors).  I still do all of my own research and writing, though I am fortunate to have the expertise of my colleagues to help me with questions outside the realm of forensic anthropology."

After a moment, Reichs added, "Let me rephrase it.  I do keep an outline.  But now I tend to do it, still chapter by chapter, as I finish each chapter.  I still plot the story, but in a less structured way.  I start with an outline of the first six chapters or, and a general overall description of the book's theme and where the story line will go, than I launch in. That makes her process "circular, not linear. Sometimes a later development forces me to go back and modify earlier sections."

With her full schedule, Kathy Reichs does not have a "typical" writing day. "Since I do not have the luxury of being a full time writer, any day that I am not at the lab, in court, on set in LA, traveling, etc. I write all day. I try to get at the computer by 8 am, stay with it, except for a lunch break, until 5 or 6 pm.  During vacation (during what?) I may even write in the morning."

Her fans don't care when she writes, as long as she keeps on doing it. Look for the next Temperance Brennan thriller, Devil Bones, in August.

Contributing editor James Scott Bell is the author of Try Dying (Center Street), first in the Ty Buchanan thriller series, and Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure (Writers Digest Books)