Talking to all those great writers and artists for the magazine was a form of graduate school for me.

My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.

You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

To this day I still watch tons of horror.

I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R.E.M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet.

Every time I try to write on vacation, I fail miserably.

Someone asked me when it was that I felt confident enough in my writing that I could rely on it as a career. The truth is, I never have. I'm always on the hunt for second, third, or fourth careers. Private detective and cinematographer were previous career choices, but now that I'm older I think I'd be a good portrait painter, rug merchant, or florist.