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.

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.

Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.

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.

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.