A lot of people work really diligently to maintain a "profile" in the writing world, but that's so hard, and so boring most of the time. So you just keep doing what you like to do, I guess, and try to enjoy it.

There is your car and the open road, the fabled lure of random adventure. You stand at the verge, and you could become anything.

You can't tell people how to feel when they read your work. You can only hope to connect.

I was worried that, as a college teacher, if I wrote too much about intergenerational sex my students would be creeped out.

I still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid.

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

In the end, there probably isn't much difference between being in love and acting like you're in love.