I wrote a paper [in school] on [William] Faulkner and no one could tell what the sentences meant.

I'm halfway through a novel set in two time frames - Austin in the 1960's and Alpine (Texas) in present day. It started out to be a small, lighthearted, humorous book about family relationships; I was tired of writing war stories and tragedies.

[My brother] was older, and since the law of the west was fairly entrenched in our household, whoever was bigger got control of the television. I sat mesmerized, and horrified, through hundreds of gunfights and became emotionally involved with everyone in Bonanza and Gunsmoke.

The defining aspects of westerns are still pretty much in place - namely landscape and conflict. In other books the conflict can be internal, but in westerns it usually plays out on a big stage.

As for whether genre considerations influence what I write, they don't at all, but I might sell more books if they did. The Night Journal is a hodge-podge of historical fiction, western, mystery, and contemporary domestic drama. It doesn't settle into a specific market, reviewers have a hard time describing it, and sometimes it gets classified weirdly in bookstores. But from a writer's standpoint, I like that it's hard to categorize.

I'd be a dope to compare my writing with Wallace Stegner's, but that book probably influenced me in ways I didn't even realize while I was writing The Night Journal.

I love Austin. It's great here. I don't mind the heat.