Terrible things happen to your characters. Your new book, “The Storyteller,” features a woman in Auschwitz. Past characters have included victims of a school shooting and parents of kids born with horrible diseases. Is it a little sadistic to put your characters through all this?

I don’t think I’m sadistic. I’m superstitious. There’s a part of me that illogically believes if I write about a child with cancer, then my kids are going to be safe. If I write about a school shooting, it won’t happen where we live. If I write about infidelity, then my marriage is going to be safe. Of course it does not work that way, and I know that.

So there’s actually a neurosis behind this?

Oh, gosh, of course there is.

What did you, an author of serial No. 1 best sellers, make of “50 Shades of Grey”?

E. L. James has been upfront about the fact that this was “Twilight” fan fiction. As a writer, I find it pretty reprehensible that someone who began a story cycle with somebody else’s created characters would go on to make gobs of money off those characters simply by slapping new names on them. Honestly, if I were Stephenie Meyer, I wouldn’t have been that gracious.

You have bristled when others have labeled you a chick-lit author.

I don’t mind the term “chick lit.” I don’t happen to write it, so I think it’s funny when people assume I do just because I happen to have a vagina. It would be news to the 47 percent of people who write me fan mail who happen to be men to find out that I write chick lit.

But the cover of this book is obviously marketed to women.

I agree. But I have learned to trust that the marketing departments know what they’re doing. When 60 percent of book buyers are women, you can’t fault a publisher for targeting that audience.