Being five-foot-ten at fourteen years old was a little bit scary.

My donkeys are Jack and Don Quixote. They're very smart, very cautious. Much of what people consider stubbornness in donkeys is actually cautiousness.

I realized that I was writing about folks with lots of skills, especially fix-it skills and survival skills, who were nonetheless not doing well in the new-millennium America.

When I was little, we lived on 8 acres and my mom had a horse. But when I was 7, my mom kicked my dad out, and then in order to feed us five kids, she got critters cheap or for free and raised them for food. We milked a cow, raised chickens, pigs and beef cattle. We heated our one-story house with wood and stayed cold all winter.

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

Drugs and drinking affect every family I know, country and city, middle-class and poor.

I like to go where the life is.