I do love the latest, Midsummer Malice, the best.

Crescent Blues: Why?

M. D. Lake: Because I do something different in this book: the chapters alternate between Peggy's point of view and the points of view of other characters -- victims, potential victims and the killer, among others. I had to do this because some of the other characters were so interesting to me that I wanted to follow them around when they weren't being observed by Peggy. I wanted to hear their thoughts.

I especially fell in love with a character, Bernie, who pretty much steals the novel from Peggy. Because the point of view isn't only Peggy's, the plotting is more complex, the characters more rounded, than what you usually get from first-person narratives.

Crescent Blues: What's the seed from which your stories grow, character, plot or ideas?

M. D. Lake: As I said earlier, my first novel grew from my desire to murder somebody. Another, Poisoned Ivy, grew out of my fascination with a student I knew who had an ugly sneer in place of a smile, and an attitude to match -- a terrifying creature! Another, Cold Comfort, grew out of its ending: I had a wonderful idea for a grand climax, and wrote it, and then had to write the novel to lead up to it. That was fun.

Crescent Blues: How carefully do you work out a plot before you start to write?

M. D. Lake: I sort of agree with Robert Frost, who said that if it's no surprise for the writer, it's no surprise for the reader. I don't work the plots out at all, I just let things happen.

It's scary that way, because for a long time I don't have much idea of what's ahead. But then, at a certain point, the characters come alive, and the story becomes clearer. While pushing ahead, I'll get an idea for how to revise something I wrote days or weeks ago. While revising that, I'll get an idea for whatever I'm writing now. So there's a lot of going back and forth, which is easy to do with a word processor.

As I'm sure you know, and anybody who deals with words and ideas for a living knows, there's a lot about writing -- any kind of writing -- that's magic: we don't know where the ideas or their formulation come from and we can look back later and think, "Gee, I wonder how I ever came up with that!"

Some of my characters seem more real to me than people I actually see often, yet they aren't based on any real person, and I don't know where they came from. Creating anything is a magic mix of sudden, surprising inspiration and hard, not always pleasant, work.

Crescent Blues: Do friends and colleagues ever ask you to put them in your books -- or accuse you of having done so?

M. D. Lake: Once, at a university function, Dean X nudged me and told me in a conspiratorial whisper how much he'd enjoyed my savage portrayal of Dean Y in my latest book. That was kind of a surreal moment for me, since the character was based on Dean X, not Y.

Usually, though, when I try to put real people into my books, the story takes them, chews them up and spits them out as something no longer recognizable. In my opinion, the difference between a real person and a character in a book is as great as the difference between the smile of a quiz show host and the grin of the contestant standing next to him.

Crescent Blues: How about foreign sales? Has Peggy appeared in any foreign languages?

M. D. Lake: One of my books, Grave Choices, has been bought by Russia, and all ten have been bought by -- don't laugh! -- Bulgaria. A lot of my friends' books get bought by the former Axis powers. Mine get bought by the former Evil Empire. Some of my stories have appeared in French and German, though.

Crescent Blues: Your Agatha Award-winning short story, "Tea for Two" (from the collection Funny Bones), is quite a departure from Peggy O'Neill in tone and style. Is this a new direction for you?

M. D. Lake: No, I don't think so. Writing short stories lets me create voices different from Peggy's, and that's a lot of fun -- just as it was fun to get into the voices of other characters in Midsummer Malice. I've written a story, "Kim's Game" (it won an Agatha too), that's told from the point of view of a child -- sort of Peggy O'Neill as a child, although that's not her name -- and I've written stories from the point of view of an elderly woman and a woman of about forty.

Crescent Blues: You mean to say that all your stories are told from the point of view of women?

M. D. Lake: Yep. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?