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Yes, I'm a woman, and yes I write thrillers. I LOVE writing thrillers, especially taking on the world from a strong female point of view.
With so many real live action women out there, from soldiers in Afghanistan to Lifeboat captains in Cornwall and explorers in Antarctica, I'm spoilt for choice.
It's far more interesting for me to explore this type of woman; what motivates her, why she won't give up, how she finds the strength to keep going, where her stamina and determination come from.
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'Well-researched, shocking, moving and exciting, Gone Without Trace shows that a British writer can take on the most vigorous of the Americans.'
Times Literary Supplement
People often ask me if there's a difference between thrillers written by women and those produced by men, to who I reply: can men write romances?
I guess there's a bias on both sides, and in my opinion women are no more or less capable of writing a cracking good thriller than a man is of writing a passionate romance. As C. J. Carver, will anyone guess my gender from my text?
I don't think it matters if a thriller writer is a man or a woman, as long as the book thrills. Personally, I like something that consumes me with believable characters, a tight plot, an unrelentingly fast pace and lots of realistic action. And since I write what I like to read, I guess my books reflect that.
'I loved it. Hard, fast and real - a solid gold A-grade thriller with a tremendous story and a great lead character . . . Captain Jay McCaulay is going to be one of the best.'
Lee Child
Another thing I'm asked is whether writing about tough subjects is difficult for me.
My latest book takes the subject of sex slavery, and follows the story of a fourteen-year-old girl trafficked from Macedonia into England.
Some scenes are violent and disturbing, and only came about while writing the story. Sadly, they were garnered from real life stories I heard when I was in the Balkans
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I wanted to put them in because I really wanted to explain how and why a young girl might wind up as a sex slave.
Some people find the subject too painful to face, but I prefer to attack a topic that scares me, horrifies me, because then I can stack the cards the other way.
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Jay McCaulay, C. J. Carver's tough, tender ex-army officer, first met in Gone Without Trace, was voted into the top 5 best female detectives by The Times, March 2008.
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