I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.

Gail had a baby named Ned who was four months old, and a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she'd overnight become glued to her spot.

Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.

It's not always to the benefit of the story to have it so preordained.

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there.

I have a book in the pipeline of short stories. You want to hear an agent scream, say 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again.