I don't consider myself attractive. I'm an academic, and in academia, people will write you off if you look younger.

My poor family. I try to protect them from my work. My parents are very religious, and my brother and sister are very normal. We have an understanding, I think, that what I do isn't quite down their alley.

For many years I wrote nothing but "I will not sleep with Steve Almond" over and over again, page after page à la Jack Torrance in The Shining. Finally, hundreds of psychotherapy sessions and an intense shaman-guided DMT sweat lodge experience led to a breakthrough, and I was able to write about other people I would not sleep with, and also about people I would.

It's a challenge of to write a narrator who is doing something that is really unlikeable and morally questionable. A lot of times, you read a book because you like the character, you are cheering for the character; you want the best for the character.

Luckily I'm on prescription drugs that prevent me from worrying about anything too much.

I've seen men in $5,000 suits urinate in public fountains here. Las Vegas is the best place on earth.

During my MFA, I was lucky to be surrounded by a really supportive group of peers. And now I get feedback pretty exclusively from freaks only.