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Margaret Vodopia Carroll enjoyed a long career in international travel and public relations, including ten years at British Airways and working on the luxury brand management team for Starwood Hotels. She has lived in New York City, Washington DC, London, Santa Fe, and currently resides with her family and Buddy (a Scottish Terrier) in Michigan. She has traveled the globe and flown Concorde (in the cockpit) and chronicled some of her adventures on her website, margaretcarroll.com.

Hello Margaret, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for us! Would you  please tell us about the latest project you've worked on?

I have back-to-back thrillers coming this fall from Avon/HarperCollins. The first, A Dark Love, goes on sale in September, and tells the story of a young wife on the run from her abusive husband. The second, Riptide, goes on sale in October, and tells the story of a Hamptons socialite who falls under a cloud of suspicion following her husband's mysterious drowning death at their oceanfront estate.

Have you received any awards for your work?

I received a starred review from Publishers Weekly (7/13/09 edition) for my debut thriller, A Dark Love. They said I "bring tight prose and excellent pacing to her taut first thriller." Those are very gratifying words. Thank you, anonymous reviewer who can't be bought.

How has your education, profession or background helped you in your writing career? Or conversely, how has you writing success helped you in your  profession?

My BA from The George Washington University was the best investment I ever made. I'm a great believer in a liberal arts degree. It teaches you to think. When it comes to higher education, I say go big or go home. I'd tell any young person with half a brain to hock everything they have, go into debt without hesitation, and spend it all on the most posh and competitive private university they can talk their way into. Work two jobs paying it back if you have to (I did). It's worth it.

The years I spent traveling the globe were priceless. There is nothing as wonderful as seeing the great huge beauty in this world, seeing all different kinds of people and how they live, and working with them in a business setting. I could never be as happy as I am now, a homemaker in a small Midwestern town, had I not had all those wonderful exciting experiences in my youth.

What kind of other works (books, scripts, poems etc.) have you had published?

I have two romantic comedies, both tender and sweet (read: no sex), set in NYC. The Write Match and The True Match (both from Avalon Books and available at libraries).

What will your next project be?

Another thriller, this one set in NYC during the coldest winter since they began keeping records. I'm a former travel writer and I love severe weather and natural disasters (true confession time:  I love watching Storm Stories). So I try to give a real sense of setting to all my work.

Who inspires you on a personal or business level?

Anybody - absolutely anywhere, anytime, anyhow - who won't quit and won't give up. Right now of course President and Mrs. Obama are tops on my list. No trust fund, no country club memberships, no big family estate. Barack Obama was raised by a single mother. He and his wife are my generation, and they just rocked it out - racking up Ivy League degrees and not letting anyone tell them what they could or couldn't do, right up till they won the White House. Woohoo!

I keep a file of people who inspire me. I clip obituaries all the time. Some people have had the most incredible and beautiful lives despite all the odds. Like the Holocaust survivor who lost his wife and young children in the camps and went on to move to the US, married again, had a bunch more kids and achieved great scientific accomplishments. Or Elie Wiesel. Or John Walsh, who honored his slain son with Adam's Law. Just think about Winston Churchill, whom I consider to be one of God's great gifts to humanity - he was an illegitimate son (of a King, okay, but still). None of them rolled over and gave up. None of them said, Oooh, this is too hard for me. They went on to make history. They've made the world a better place for the rest of us. I keep a file called Faith and I throw stuff in it all the time to read on my blue days. To remember that greatness and heroism come in spite of adversity.

Helen Keller said:  "All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle."

What type of work is the most rewarding or satisfying for you?

Writing suspense. I just love to tell stories where someone's safety is in peril. Because you can live your life the best way you can every day and if your path crosses true evil just for one minute, you will spend the rest of your days trying to get over it. And you will. I love writing about people dealing with adversity, whether it's of their own making or someone else rained it down on them.

What can you recommend for writers who are just getting started and are trying to make a name for themselves?

First, read all you can. From the time you learn in first grade. Hope you've been doing that all along.

Second, I'll put my own spin on the most popular (and best) advice out there, which is write every day. My personal advice is finish the novel. If you want to write a novel, then you simply must sit in a chair and write it start to finish. You need to discipline yourself to do that. You will not succeed until you do so. Journaling will not get you there (gag me, it's so self-absorbed). Refining bits and pieces of scenes will not get you there. Reworking and re-editing your first three chapters will not get you there. Entering contests will not get you there. Going to writer's workshops will not get you there.

Telling a story, start to finish, will get you published. Write the book. Write the whole thing. Beginning to end. Even the hard parts that won't come, the elusive parts you skipped over in that preliminary outline, over and over. You know, the parts you told your agent would work themselves out? And then they didn't.....well, write those parts too.

Do the work. Write the book even when you're scared you can't. Dig into those tough scenes. Write them until  you're so exhausted all you can do is call your mother on the phone and cry. Write through it. Get a crappy first daft done and spend years revising it. Revise it until you get gray hairs. Revise it until you can't think straight. Revise it again and again and again. Make it as good as you can.

Writing is fun. Writing a novel start to finish is not. It will give you migraines and make you consider calling your former boss to see if you can get your old job back. But don't. Put on your big girl panties and finish the book. You'll feel much better once you've done it.

How did you get started as a writer?

Sixth grade. Miss Burrows' class at South Ridge Elementary School in Dix Hills, New York. We got an assignment to work in teams of two to write a short piece of fiction we could read aloud to the class. I edged out my partner (Barbara Someone, she was nice and fun to brainstorm with, I still remember that) and made sure we worked on my idea, a mock soap opera called "Love of Lord." I read it out loud doing this funny Don Pardo kind of voice and all the kids laughed, and I got an A plus. I wanted to keep going, so the teacher took a vote and everyone voted to cut recess short each Wednesday by ten minutes so I could read aloud my latest story. By the end of the year, other teachers were bringing their classes in to listen and so was the principal. I was hooked.

Which is your favorite book/work published? Is there a favorite?

If you mean my work, I'd have to say Riptide (coming in October from Avon/HarperCollins). I loved writing about Christina because she is a flawed character, an alcoholic who is early on in her recovery, and trying to sort through the wreckage of her lie. She's made some awful choices and they've come back to bite her now that she's hit rock-bottom.

But I have compassion for her! As I learned her backstory, I saw that she was motivated by the same things that motivate all of us. She wanted security and happiness and love. She just went about it the wrong way. And now she's trying to fix it. I don't think pop fiction does much to show females grappling with real problems - it seems to be all about shoes and shopping and dieting and dating. The really fun stuff, like recovering from alcoholism, gets reserved for male characters. So I really enjoyed working with Christina.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

I try to write in the mornings but once I'm into the story, I can get plugged in any time of day or night. I can edit with very little sleep, lots of background noise and toys bouncing off the back of my head. Chalk that up to doing my time in a real live newsroom in the early eighties, when the Reuters wire still rang one, two or three times depending on what just came across the wire.

Who is your favorite author?

I read everything I can by Harlan Coben at the moment. I also love Tana French (In the Woods) and Marcus Sakey (The Blade Itself).

Finally, a most important question: what was the last song you sang out loud when you were by yourself?  :)

American Pie by Don McLean.

Thank you Margaret! We wish you great success with your two new novels A Dark Love and Riptide!