I want a real encounter with something true and disconcerting about peoples' natures.

So much of the way books get classified has to do with marketing decisions. I think it's more useful to think of literary books and sci-fi/fantasy books as existing on a continuum.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

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.

Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.

My mom says I'm destined to be the sort of man who uses big words but pronounces them incorrectly.

You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu.