Dogwalker is a book of fiction, with characters based on the types of people who truly exist in the world. I've seen them and know them - some of them I know really well. Although the stories are sometimes gritty and unsettling, my hope is that in the end they hit a positive note.

I want people to read them and enjoy the experience and feel entertained. A lot of the best stories revolve around strange people, people whose decisions and logic and circumstances are not easily understood.

I've worked in several different places, most of my experience comes from spending eight summers at a camp for adults with a wide range of disabilities. For six years I spent every summer living in a small cabin with five men with Downes Syndrome. It was just me and these five guys, all in their forties and fifties. We had such a great time.

I want the situations and plots to be surprising and unusual.

I'm interested in other animals too though. There's the slug in "Mollusks", and I wrote a story about bees and one about a cat which got thrown out a window by mistake, but those never made it into the collection.

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'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.