SB: What is the best part about being a best-selling author? What is the worst part?

DB: The best part is being able to write full-time and be in control of your creative life. The hardest part is not letting all the ancillary things that come with being a bestselling novelist interfere with the creative time.

SB: Does being so popular discourage you - or other popular writers you know
- from trying something very different from what you have written in the past?

DB: I've written a number of different types of stories. Wish You Well has been compared numerous times with To Kill A Mockingbird; The Christmas Train was a romantic screwball comedy on a cross-country train. Even my thrillers are very different from each other. I didn't become a writer to write the same story over and over.

SB: This interview is coming out prior to the book's publication. In 100
words or less why should someone read this book?

The story line is totally unique. First, you have the Camel Club introduced in a novel of the same name last year. They give one a perspective on Washington D.C. and its power enclaves that has never been seen before in fiction.

Then, in The Collectors you take the political world and mix it together with the intrigue and danger of high-stakes espionage.

Lastly, you throw in the kicker — the world's greatest con, Annabelle Conroy. She takes both the politicians and the spies for a ride they won't soon forget. And neither will the reader.

SB: Which character in this book do you most identify with?

Annabelle Conroy. Who hasn't fantasized about being a high-level con
taking greedy people with far too much money already for a ride?

SB: What is the biggest misconception about you? This is your chance to respond to misconceptions or critics.
Many readers who meet me are surprised that I'm not white-haired and
pushing eighty. I guess because of what I write about and how much I
seem to know about interesting/secret things. I'm actually in my
forties.