Your riveting portrayal of the inner workings of the NYPD has the feel of someone who has worked those very streets.  I'd love to hear about your life in New York.  Did you grow up there or nearby?  I love visiting New York.  Are there certain places that inspire you most or places where you go to get lost in your work?  (Write these places down, folks! This author knows NYC!)

I was born in Nurnberg, though I grew up in Northeastern Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie.  My favorite thing to do in New York is roam the streets at night when everyone else is in bed, after teaching a class, or on the way home from a restaurant.  The other day I did a spot on WBAI and I walked up from the studio on Wall Street to my home in the East Village. I left at 6 a.m. so I got to see the day transform from a cold, rainy night to a clear, sunny dawn - it was magical. I walked through the Southstreet Seaport and up through Chinatown, Little Italy, Nolita, and the Lower East Side just as the coffee cart guys were opening, and the Chinese bakeries were filling up with early morning customers.  I love the rivers - the Hudson is the most stunning, of course, but I have great fondness for my gritty East River - I like to look across at Brooklyn. The city streets there are as beautiful as anything I've seen.

It's so hard to choose from among the many glories of this great city, but some recent favorites are The Bronx Botanical Garden, the Staten Island Ferry, Riverside Park, hiking Todt Hill on Staten Island, the Prospect Park Halloween celebration (the ghouls on Lookout Hill rock!), the Greek restaurants in Queens, the Middle Eastern shops along Atlantic Avenue.  My favorite part of Central Park is the northern section - I like to ice skate at the rink there in lower Harlem.  I love the quiet streets of the Spuyten Duyvil section of Riverdale, and Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx.  I have a number of favored restaurants. Sushi Hanna on Amsterdam Avenue, and Hi Life right across the street. For pizza it's V&T, and my favorite restaurant in New York is Keens Steakhouse - though my East Village has the best selection and best prices in Manhattan, I think.  Of course I love McSorley's - doing "research" there is a guilty pleasure.

My East Village is dear to me for so many reasons - the Polish/Ukranian/Russian flavor, with the restaurants and wonderful little shops, all the great Asian places, the Latino population, and the places you can get a good café con leche or cortadito . . .  East Village Cheese is a miracle store, and the Great Jones Café is adorable.  I love going to avante garde theatre at PS 122, or LaMama, and there are several other wonderful theatre companies in residence here, including the Pearl and the Barrow Street Theatre (in the West Village, which is of course charming and wonderful).   I love the Indian/Pakistani places on Lexington Avenue, the Bangladeshi places on 6th Street - I have two favorite Pakistani taxi stand places where I go for steamed coffee or curries late at night.

I love wandering through Nolita and looking at the little art galleries, or stopping in for some cupcakes at Sugar Sweet Sunshine on Rivington, or buying bulk walnuts and candy corn at Economy Candy.  I also love to shop at the Tompkins Park Farmers Market, the Essex Street Market, and eat at Shopsin's. The Winter Garden in Battery Park is a gem - in the winter they have silent film screenings with live music.   And Chinatown!  What can I say about that place that would do it justice?  Amazing atmosphere and food, and the shops are endlessly fascinating; you can get anything from Tiger Balm to shark's fin.  I like to shop for Asian groceries at a place down on Bayard Street, because they have goods from many Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, China, Japan, and others.  I haven't been to the new High Line park in Chelsea yet, but have heard great things about it.

I could go on and on .... I've already left out some of my favorites, but there's just too much to cover . . .

Publisher's Weekly likened your work to Keith Ablow--quite a compliment--is psychology a field that particularly intrigues you?  How do you go about your research to capture such a sophisticated characterization of a psychologist-turned-criminal profiler?

As a writer and an actor, psychology is one of the subjects that I do find endlessly fascinating.  If you read the great writers, even pre-Freud, they pretty much knew what was going on in people's heads.

Though at school I was an English/German major, I've been studying psychology and criminal psychology for quite a few years now.  I have an extensive library of books on the subject, and I took an excellent course in criminal psychology at John Jay College from Dr. Lewis Schlesinger.  I was also in therapy myself for a number of years, and that helped too.  I think my therapist sometimes got frustrated when instead of talking about myself, I would ask her about her job - but I really wanted to know!

With lots of great stories out there involving serial killers, what decisions did you make as you developed the story to create a unique killer?

One thing I did was to write some chapters from his point of view.  It helped me to find my way into his head, to experience motivation from the inside out.  I also hoped it would be interesting for the reader to have a ringside seat, so to speak - as well as rather creepy (in a good way, I hope).

In real life the permutations of pathopsychology are endless.  Most serial killers have things in common - the linkage of sex and violence in the brains of sexually motivated offenders, for example.  But the signatures and MO's can vary widely.   For instance, the Ted Levine character in Silence of the Lambs is based on the real life serial killer Ed Gein, who did make skins out of human flesh, which he draped over his own body.  My killer has some similar family background issues, such as an overbearing mother who lectures on the evils of women and sex - but his MO and his signature are different.

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C.E. Lawrence is the byline of a New York-based suspense writer, performer, and prize-winning playwright whose previous books have been praised as "lively. . ." (Publishers Weekly); "constantly absorbing. . ." (starred Kirkus Review); and "superbly crafted prose" (Boston Herald).

Debra Webb wrote her first story at age nine and her first romance at thirteen. It wasn't until she spent three years working for the military behind the Iron Curtain and within the confining political Walls of Berlin, Germany, that she realized her true calling. A five-year stint with NASA on the Space Shuttle Program reinforced her love of the endless possibilities within her grasp as a storyteller. A collision course between suspense and romance was set. Debra has been writing romantic suspense and action packed romantic thrillers since.