That year, everyone was doing the Jane Fonda Workout, and I was no exception. But it didn’t matter, because I lived by myself. Over the decades, the building had shifted, and my unit’s bathroom door no longer fit completely in the frame. The hill was held back by a retaining wall a few feet behind the apartments. My apartment complex had been carved into a steep hillside. It all started in 1982, when I moved to Portland to finish college. Then in 2019, real life handed me a book idea when I was trapped by a blizzard with a group of strangers in a strange old motel.
Eventually I started giving those problems and solutions to characters. While I escaped unscathed, that event made me obsess about what I could do if something again went terribly wrong. My career as a thriller writer began the night my life almost ended-the night a stranger broke into my apartment while I was in the shower.
