It seems like the Western genre has crept out of its casings during the last few years, and expanded to include books and movies we wouldn't originally have thought of as westerns.

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

Angle of Repose is one of my favorite books. I fell in love with it in college. When I submitted The Night Journal to my agent she got very excited because she said it reminded her of Angle of Repose.

I love the writers in Austin. We stick together. We all like each other and go to each other's book signings in case no one else shows up.

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.

In middle school I wrote a paper on Hemingway and none of the sentences had more than five words.

I changed my hopes to being a singer [when I was a child] and sat around with my hair in my face droning Mac Davis songs. Writing was sort of a last stand. Come to think of it, it was the only "talent" I had that anyone asked for more of.