What's the most important thing you've learned about the publishing business? And what's the most valuable piece of advice you could give an aspiring author?

The most important thing...well, I know you've heard it before, but the only thing you can control is writing the best book you possibility can at the time you write it.  For aspiring authors, don't polish the one project you have to death at the expense of continuing to write.  Write a lot and finish projects.

You co-write the Sydney Croft novels with a writer named Larissa Ione. What's that like? Do you always have the same vision for the characters? I think readers would be intrigued to know how this collaboration works out.

It's honestly really easy, and that's because Larissa (she also writes a fantastic, bestselling Demonica series) and I often joke that we share a brain.  For the most part, I write the hero's pov and Larissa the heroines, and we each take different subplot characters. There's a lot of energy and the writing tends to go very fast.  It's honestly easier than writing on my own, because our strengths and weaknesses balance one another out - the whole, two heads are better than one - is very true in this case.

Can you give us a peek at your To-Be-Read pile? Do you tend to read thrillers, or do you like to read outside your genre, especially when you're deep into your manuscript?

On the TBR pile - Karin Slaughter's Undone, Linda Howard's Ice, Ava Gray's Skin Game, Barry Eisler's Fault Line, Nina Bruhn's Shoot to Thrill and Lynn Viehl's Shadowlight.

What's next on the horizon?

I'm working on the second book in a new series that comes out back to back in late 2010 - still military heroes, loosely connected to the Hold world - the series title is Shadow Force and the book titles are Lie With Me and Promises in the Dark.  And Larissa and I are writing Sydney Croft's sixth book.

Mary Kennedy is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the author of The Talk Radio Mysteries. She lives on the east coast with her husband and eight neurotic cats. The cats have resisted all her efforts to psychoanalyze them, but she remains optimistic.