It took me the bulk of my twenties to write one book about a family of alligator wrestlers. Whereas somebody like Steve Martin is releasing his latest banjo symphony, having just completed another movie and acclaimed, best-selling novel.

I would love to travel around the world working for a travel company taking students abroad on cultural immersion trips.

Sometimes it can feel like the whole globe is spinning with irredeemable losses, capricious natural disasters and crimes so outrageously evil they dismantle any attempt to solve or explain them.

I am extremely close to my brother, Kent, and my sister, Lauren, who have been remarkably understanding about all of my weird sibling tales.

If you're short on time, that would be the two-word version of our story: we fell.

I hope that in my thirties I grow as a writer, push into new territory.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.