I asked Brown what some of her essentials were when crafting her page turners.

"Like all fiction, including suspense and thrillers, character is essential.  A writer must create a characters that the reader cares about.  Even if the main character is the villain, like Forsythe's 'Jackal,' the reader must be captivated by his/her predicament and worried about how he/she is going to get out of it.

"Suspense is another essential.  That doesn't necessarily mean the 'Boo!' kind of suspense.  Every novel should have suspense.  It's the element that keeps the reader turning the pages. I try and pose a question, subliminally, to my reader on the first page if possible, and I withhold the answer to that question until the very final pages.  New questions arise along the way, and they're gradually answered as the story unfolds.  But that main, overriding question, the one that makes a story out of a mere idea, is the last one to be answered."

After a string of romance novels in the 80's, Brown jumped onto the New York Times bestseller list with Mirror Image (1990). Did she consciously do anything different with that book?

"The initial idea for Mirror Image was that someone who was wrapped in head bandages and believed to be someone else, was told a deadly secret. I had skeptics who didn't think a person could pass themselves off as someone else, or that identities could be mistaken and swapped at the scene of a terrible accident. Yet, since 1990 when that book came out, that very thing has happened numerous times.  But whether it's entirely plausible or not, it made a good story!  And my criteria has always been: is it within the realm of possibility?  Not necessarily likely, but within the realm of possibility.  When you think about it, that's pretty vast territory!  I can't think of a truly riveting book that doesn't flirt with implausibility.  If you want truth, read non-fiction."

Brown's work ethic has not flagged over the years.

"I owe my publisher one book a year.  It takes me about nine months of writing to fulfill that contract, and that's a good pace for me.  (The other three months, not sequentially, I live my life, do promotion, travel, etc.) I do four drafts of each book.  The first two take two to three months apiece.  The third about a month.  The final read-through a couple of weeks.

"I'm not a morning person.  I get to the office (outside my house) around 9:30 and stay till around 6:00.  I'm not writing all that time.  There's a lot of administrative stuff required to run the business, which isn't my favorite thing.  I much prefer the writing.  Twice a year, I go away, lock myself in, and write for several weeks with as little interruption as possible.  I love those times when I can become totally immersed in the story."

I asked Brown about the genesis of Smash Cut, released earlier this year, which features a villain obsessed with Hitchcockian reenactments.

"It's been a long-standing habit within my family -- all of us movie buffs -- to drop quotes from favorite films into our conversations.   We can quote entire scenes sometimes. I took that game of ours and asked myself what if a film fanatic not only quoted movie script, but began acting out scenes?  That was the premise that I built the story around.

"Researching Smash Cut was great fun.  I watched a lot of movies, sometimes replaying a scene again and again so I could get the quote word-for-word correct. Most challenging was finding a murder scene I could use at the story's climax.  I polled every movie fan I knew to suggest one. Most of those submitted were grisly scenes -- but my villain wasn't about grisly.

"I was conducting my own search for that all-important scene when I came across Frenzy.  I'd never seen that Hitchcock film, so I ordered it. The one murder scene the audience experiences is so disturbing, I couldn't replicate it! It's discussed in the book, but I just couldn't bring myself to reenact it. I wimped out!"

Brown's latest release is Rainwater, a departure for her, but earning excellent reviews.

"Last year I wrote the first draft of Rainwater between finishing Smoke Screen and beginning Smash Cut.  Between drafts of Smash Cut I'd get it out and work on it when I could afford the time without jeopardizing my delivery of Smash Cut. It was worth the extra effort.  This is a very different book from my thrillers.  It's set in Depression era Texas."

Visit www.sandrabrown.net for more on one of the bestselling authors of our time.

James Scott Bell is the author of TRY DYING (Center Street) and WRITE GREAT FICTION: PLOT & STRUCTURE (Writers Digest Books). James contributes the monthly Between The Lines features.