Before taking up her fiction writing, Woods wrote Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, an anthology of black mystery, crime, and suspense fiction of the 20th century. Her inspiration for this book and her own novels, she says, came from Walter Moseley, who she thanks for "for writing so eloquently and powerfully that I began to think that maybe I, too, had something to say about life and crime in Los Angeles and, by extension, America. I would have never attempted to write fiction if Walter hadn’t preceded me, telling tales and writing truth that transcends race and class."