Kate Evans

She's fantastic.

Stephen King was a huge influence growing up.

Books like The Shining, again, with using a location, even with the movie, that initial scene where you're kind of from above following the car

along that twisty mountain road to the Overlook Hotel, you get that sense of we're on our own here.

Anything could happen.

The snows, the blizzards are on their way.

I just love that because it means that you can focus more on character because you're limiting the cast, you're limiting the locale.

So you get really deep into the characters who are already trapped in that place.

I find that very intoxicating.

Also, writers like Yaa Gyasi.

I read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi just a month or so after it came out.

And I was bowled over by her ambition, how she managed to write so many stories and link them together so beautifully in one short novel.

The ambition of that was really inspiring for me.

The fact that, you know, when I read a writer like her, I realize I can perhaps break rules or I can stretch myself.

And that's really important, I think, in terms of crafting.

Absolutely.

I mean, I read really widely.

I read every genre.

But I guess things like Cormac McCarthy, again, maybe not in the correct genre, but I think No Country for Old Men is arguably a great crime novel.

James Lee Burke, I'm a huge fan of.