I was 30 before I made a living that was not embarrassing.

I think I'm gonna attach myself to the sinking ship that is book publishing.

I used to use cigarettes to indicate somebody's an outsider a lot. It gave character a seedy, disreputable, almost suicidal quality. Now cigarettes are so unused - - you can't have anybody indoors smoking. If you drew that in a restaurant, you'd have to have a panel where the manager comes over and kicks them out. Unless it's set in Europe, you can't really do that. Characters who smoke - - it dates comics, somehow.

I see a lot of possibilities in the age of my characters - between 18 and 21. You have a window of opportunity when you leave your childhood behind and have this chance to become what you always wanted to be. For me, that was a time when I could have gone many different ways. I was in flux and deciding what kind of person I would become. There's something interesting about the vision of what that will be and the reality of making that happen, and how you really are what you are. Unless you're "in character," it's impossible to get around that.

I really want people to read the book, and bookstores never sold an issue of Eightball because nobody knew what it was.

I never know if a book is crazy or not. There's that fear - this is the one that will end it all.

That's been my main interest for the last 15 years, is to really make sure the story and the characters take precedence over everything else, and that I give them everything I can to make them exist as actual people.