Weirdly the writing experience has not really changed that much except it used to be that I was busy because I had to work a couple of jobs to earn money, so I didn't have time to write.

I worked probably fewer jobs than most people, or fewer real soul-killing jobs than other people. I've been a typist, a typesetter, a keyliner, cappuccino-maker. I think I've been pretty lucky.

Some people tell me they would be afraid of my characters, but I tell those people [that] they meet these characters all the time. They just don't care about them when they meet them, at the gas station, the car wash, the post office even.

I can't personally drink or fight too much nowadays because I have to be perky in the morning in order to write.

Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence. We have to decide then to ignore the violence and create a gentler world in our fiction, or to heighten the violence through the use of point-of-view in order to explore it and gain some insight and understanding. Since I'm living with the violence and trouble in my brain, it's kind of a relief to write about it, to get it on paper, to put it in context, to find meaning in it.

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

Weirdly the writing experience has not really changed that much except it used to be that I was busy because I had to work a couple of jobs to earn money, so I didn't have time to write.