Where I live you're not supposed to shoot a firearm within a quarter mile of a dwelling.

I'm pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death.

I mostly write about the working poor. Somehow, they're not being written about much anymore. I'm very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.

Mostly the natural landscapes work as a sounding board for my characters, so they can understand themselves, and it acts as a mirror in which we readers see ourselves. The natural world is the place into which all my characters have to situate themselves in order to be who they really are, and that makes my rural fiction feel different from a lot of urban fiction.

I enjoy shooting. Around where I live, it's something you do for entertainment once in a while, you go out and shoot targets.

I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus than I do my female characters.

I think by writing about a place with great specificity, you manage to make it universal.