Carol O'Connell Quote
When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.
When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.
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About Carol O'Connell
O'Connell earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Arizona State University and embarked on a career as an artist, writing fiction "in the closet" as a hobby. She grew more interested in writing fiction than in her art career and, after initially having the manuscript for her first book, Mallory's Oracle, turned down by American publishers, she sold publication rights to a British publisher, Hutchinson, with rights auctioned to European publishers. It then was acquired for the U.S. and Canadian markets by Putnam in an $800,000 two-book deal.