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.

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.

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.

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 grew up thirty miles down the highway in San Marcos, and I've still got family there, so I guess I'm pretty well rooted.

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.

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