I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.

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.

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.

I think my characters - well, at least a few of them - are hoping or searching for some kind of contact with god.

Id always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.

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

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.