I've never heard of that anthology [Vance Randolph, Pissing in the Snow], but you can be sure I'll buy it now.

I've never heard of that anthology [Vance Randolph, Pissing in the Snow], but you can be sure I'll buy it now.

It's very easy for me to feel sympathy for people who are messed up. It's not that I'm a pseudo-saint or a great person. I had a lot of trouble with drugs and alcohol when I was younger, and I know how easy it can be to mess up the rest of your life. One bad turn, one bad night, one big mistake, and everything is screwed up. Or maybe you were just born in the wrong house and raised in a bad way. I guess I can understand.

I guess music is the one universal art form that most people can be moved by, regardless of where they come from, and for many it might be the closest they get to god, but I think taking a trip out into the country, away from the light pollution, and looking at a clear night sky is what does it best for me.

There are a lot of writers from the South who would probably have once figured they needed to go to New York to make it who have stayed closer to home - people like David Joy, Tom Franklin, Sheldon Lee Compton, Wiley Cash, Mark Powell, and Alex Taylor.

The way I saw the characters these things just happened naturally. At the same time - and I know it's probably not apparent when you read the book - but I really tried to hold back because I didn't want it to become a cartoon.

I really have no idea where the darkness comes from. Other writers have said that there are two subjects worth writing about, love and death; and since I'm a complete flop when it comes to love, I chose death. Too, maybe because of where I came from, I do find it easy to empathise with and write about certain groups of damaged or downtrodden people: the poor, the addicted.