It's not like it ruined my life, I was going to say, but then I didn't. Because it occurred to me that maybe it had ruined my life, in a kind of quiet way--a little lie, probably not so vital, insidiously separating me from everyone I loved.

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

I also have just my own limits about stuff. I'm not interested in writing graphically about sexual assault for example. I feel like the stuff that I'm fascinated by is the stuff that's part of the public imagination of what horror is. The bleakness is a different issue. I think that just stems from my personality. I wish that I offered a little more glimmer of hope sometimes.

I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once - I've been working on three different novels. When I get stuck on one, I hop back and forth.

I started out as a poet who primarily wanted to write about image and moment. Over the years I've been trying to teach myself how to do plot and scene. My first story collection had the most issues with the plotlessness, and when I was writing my second collection I was teaching myself how to make things happen.

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

The thing that made me turn more towards writing was realizing how hard it was going to be to get a singular vision on film and how much more control I would have if I were writing novels.