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.

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.

The Night Journal received two awards that I'm terribly proud of - -the Spur from Western Writers of America, and the Willa Literary Award from Women Writing the West. Both these groups are filled with great writers and good people.

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.

When Larry Wright won the Pulitzer for The Looming Tower we all strutted around for weeks, until some sourpuss among us noted that it was actually Larry, and not the rest of us, who won the prize.

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 anticipation, you never know what to expect of a book. They're like kids: you bring them into the world, fret about them, and then at some point there's no other option but to turn them lose and see how they do.