Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

The writer has to take risks and go somewhere full of mystery and possibility for the novel to deepen over the years it takes to write it.

I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.

I try to write about how we live today, how we use language, technology, our bodies.

I want what I write to be deeply engaging and strange and true.

You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.