The Unforgiving Minutes was the first novel I ever wrote. I had been writing (and actually selling!) short stories and I thought that's what I was meant to do. But this story kept getting longer and longer and at last I had to admit it was a novel. I learned how to write a novel by writing this one over and over -- and it shows. I also thought it was the only novel I'd ever write, so it has just about everything in it: a murder, a secret, a shoot-out, a love story, gangsters, horses, an old house ... everything. That house on the cover doesn't look anything like the house described in the book, by the way.