My Writing Life by Meg Gardiner:

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In my last post I mentioned that when I tell people the title of my new novel, their eyes go wide. The Dirty Secrets Club.

They say: Where'd you come up with that? They're thinking: No way she just invented that. The novel's set in San Francisco, and she lived near San Francisco, so two plus two equals... A friend even sent me the card below, showing the Golden Gate Bridge with the caption: "Say, Mommy - what did you and Daddy do when you were members of the Dirty Secrets Club?"

So this is a good time for me to say, loudly: Not all novels are autobiographical.

Especially not The Dirty Secrets Club. I've never sprinted across the roof of a skyscraper in stilettos, trying to escape the gaze of a news chopper. I've never chased a killer across the Golden Gate Bridge.

I have, however, been through a knock-you-down earthquake.

Here's the truth: my novels are not autobiographical, but ­everything that happens in my life is fair game for becoming book material.

And things do end up in my books. But altered - for example, a longtail boat ride down the river in Bangkok, which in real life was fast and fun, became a lunatic chase scene in my novel Kill Chain. My crazy cousins from Oklahoma became, in Mission Canyon - okay, they became Evan Delaney's crazy cousins from Oklahoma. And the Japanese samurai sword that features in The Dirty Secrets Club exists in real life. It belongs to my husband, who's a martial artist. For years we slept with it under our bed. And, like Jo Beckett in the novel, I once defended my home with it.

Not against bad guys, granted. But when I chased that squirrel out of the house at swordpoint, it knew who was boss.

In books, real life gets reshaped. It becomes thriller-ier.

But people still don't know what to make of me. Crime novelist. That sounds suspicious. When we moved into our house a few years ago, the neighbors couldn't figure me out. I looked ordinary. I shop for groceries and take out the trash. My kids ride the school bus, and my Labrador always finds a way to escape through the gate. Yet - I write thrillers. Where people die.

I could almost hear them thinking: She looks normal on the outside... maybe like a poisoned cookie. Plus she's from California, and that place is definitely off the wall. It has Malibu, and the Zodiac killer, and Charlie's Angels. And Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator.

Yeah, I tell them: California's awesome. Sometimes I add, "Dude."

After a couple of years I thought I'd convinced everybody I wasn't a chainsaw killer. But one day I needed to verify that a scene I'd written was truly credible. To check that it's possible to escape from the backseat of a pickup truck when you've been drugged, disabled, and dumped on the floor, I got in the backseat of my car and pretended to be drugged, disabled, and dumped on the floor. Struggling, I managed to haul myself onto the seat, all the while acting drugged out of my skull. I slumped against the window, satisfied. And saw my neighbor standing on her front porch staring straight at me.

Sometimes danger and screwball comedy are only an inch apart.

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Meg Gardiner, The Dirty Secrets Club, San Francisco, murder, Jo Beckett, forensic psychiatrist, Stephen King, thriller, Penguin Books, books