I worked at Salon.com way back when they started, and there's just unmeasurable value to distributing words online, too, but I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning.

Tim O'Brien's book about Vietnam, The Things They Carried, has won every award, is studied in college and is considered to be definitive. But it's fiction.

Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

He wanted to fly in lightweight contraptions with her.

I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian.

She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.

For years I feared the opening of every elevator, half-convinced that from the opened doors would come a bullet, for me, shot by a man in a tan trenchcoat. I have no idea why I feared this, expected it to happen. I even knew how I would react to this bullet coming from the elevator door, what word I would say. That word was: Finally.