Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

James Siegel

James Siegel says the most common question he's asked by readers is, Where do you get your ideas? His standard answer is, I don't know-do you have any? The real answer, of course, is, Everywhere. Siegel tends to write about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Being a self-described "ordinary person," Siegel doesn't find it hard to place himself in the protagonist's shoes. Riding the Long Island railroad for instance-where attractive women would sometimes occupy the seat beside him-sent Siegel into reveries of what if? That ended up as Derailed-the story of an ordinary ad guy whose life goes awry when he meets a woman on the train. Adopting kids in Colombia gave him the notion for Detour, where an adoption goes terribly, murderously wrong. And then there was the day he was lying in a massage room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. The masseuse touched his neck and said, What's bothering you? Siegel's response: How do you know something's bothering me? And she said, Because I'm an empath.

Siegel was puzzled.

An empath? What's that?