It was really just the name that inspired me: Rainsboro. It's located near Rocky Fork State Park. I have probably driven through that little place a thousand times, but, in that weird way my mind works sometimes, one particular evening it just hit me the right way, I guess. Created a mood more than anything else. And then I started thinking about a woman and her young son who end up there.

I'm beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

Probably because I personally knew at least six or seven people in Ross County who died from overdoses in the last three years. The heroin epidemic is just too aggravating and sad and unsettling for even someone like me to live with and think about for the time it would take to write a book dealing with it.

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.

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

I do believe the world is a pretty sad, troubled, and violent place. Maybe that's why I focus on the trouble. Even though there are good people and good things, there's also a bunch of messed up stuff. And I learned early on, you have to have some trouble in your stories. I definitely go overboard on that, but I have a lot more fun writing about the trouble.

I'm not sure I would have ever decided to try to write when I was forty-five if I hadn't already gotten that degree [in English].