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.

Part of the reason might be that I was born in 1954 and I look upon my youth with great fondness, like many old men. And, though my work doesn't focus much on good things, I see that period as America's heyday. True, we had many problems, like racism and Vietnam, but we still weren't quite as nuts as we seem to be now.

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.

I really have no idea what the French think of my characters, or why The Devil All the Time did so well there.

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.

Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.

A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.