She starts at the beginning and knows where the novel is going but not necessarily how she's going to get there. With Under the Beetle's Cellar , the final manuscript ended up bearing no resemblance to the proposal Doubleday bought. Fortunately the publisher was happy anyway. Unusual among fiction writers, Walker keeps an office away from her house and goes there every day, Monday through Friday, to work. Her office is a single large room in a nondescript Northwest Hills building full of dentists.
Nobody comes there.
Walker could have all the company she wants. She agrees that the sheer number of mystery novelists working in Austin and in Texas seems to have exploded in recent years. For eight years Walker was a member of a small critique group of aspiring Austin writers. Graduates include not only Walker but Susan Rogers Cooper, up for an Edgar this year for best paperback-original novel, and Susan Wade, nominated last year in the same category. Texas also fascinates Japan, where two of Walker's novels have been best sellers.