Jennifer asked Chelsea Cain:

First, I have to say that I am a HUGE fangirl of all things Archie & Gretchen! AND I just got One Kick today and am SUPER excited to read it! My question: what inspired the A&G relationship? How did you one day think "I will write super twisted psychological thrillers that will continuously blow my readers' minds"? Was it something you read? A dream? Divine revelation? Thank you! I can't wait to see you at ajcDBF! ;)

Chelsea Cain Well I am in Decatur (getting ready to go to sleep in my hotel room) so I figured I'd better answer this question. I was pregnant and I saw an episode of Larry King about the Green River Killer. It included footage of one of the Green River Killer task force detectives interviewing Gary Ridgway (the GRK - a guy who'd been at large for 20 years and pursued by the task force for most of those). Ridgway cut the same deal that I have Gretchen cut in the books - in order to avoid the death penalty he agreed to tell the task force where more bodies were. And so the detectives from this task force (many of whom had spent their careers hunting Ridgway and had known him from early on as he was an early suspect) were faced with having to now spend even more time with him, trying to coax confessions out of him. In the footage I saw that night the detective and Ridgway looked like old friends. If you'd just come across them in a bar you'd have thought they were buddies. They had the easy banter of people who've known each other for a long time. They were laughing. But underneath that was this incredibly complex relationship, layers upon layers of manipulation and so much at stake. I was immediately fascinated by it. And I thought, what if the killer were a woman? Because that obviously adds a whole other element of sexual tension to an already electric situation. And within a few days I had come up with Archie and Gretchen and I was writing Heartsick. I actually wrote all the back story of Heartsick first. The present-day plot was just an excuse to explore Archie and Gretchen's relationship.

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