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

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.

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

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.

I felt like a number of things in me as a writer just clicked.

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

For a long time, I thought you could remain isolated and survive, and I didn't want to change that. But over the last three or four books, I've become more comfortable with the idea that I'm not really throwing anything away by being a bit more open about my books and life.