The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed.

I think some people at Doubleday worried about that a bit when Knockemstiff came out, but, with the exception of one or two people who complained that I didn't do justice to the many good people who lived in the holler, most of the local objections have been aimed at the violence and foul language.

I'm not sure what the proper label might be, or the most accurate one, but someone once called my stuff Southern Ohio Gothic and I thought that was fair.

Though there are still many good people out there in the world, it seems that they're vastly outnumbered by the stupid, selfish, violent ones.

If a person does this for just a couple of years and discovers that it just isn't for him, that's okay. At least he can move on knowing that he gave it his best shot.

I've always liked reading books that contain funny lines or situations, and maybe because my work is known chiefly for its violence and misery, I made a more conscious attempt with The Heavenly Table to do that myself.

When I first started out, I was trying to write stories about nurses and lawyers and a lot of people I didn't know anything about, and they just weren't working.