I've found that I seek out oddballs; I like strange and eccentric people a lot.

I've always liked the classic "young adult" writers like Mark Twain, Jack London, Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens. They write so clearly, and they know how to entertain.

I never really set out to research any of these stories. I try to lead an interesting life though. I guess the closest I came to research was when I applied to work at the state mental institution in Austin, TX. I wanted to work the night shift like Ken Kesey did when he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thought that might inspire me to write a book that great.

I was living in a house with 11 dogs and all I thought about was dogs. I never had sex with any of them though.

I wanted to do a collection where the narrator is constant throughout, so that there's a little unity.

I have two dogs myself and they are always around when I write, so they tend to creep in there.

I write most of my first drafts on an old manual typewriter, a really old one. It's a big black metal "Woodstock" from about 1920. I try to write everything down at once, in one sitting. The longer stories in this collection are divided up into sections. Each section represents a different sitting, a different idea for the same story.