For me, fiction's great gift - to writer and reader, alike - is freedom.

My fondness for extended monologue might have been encouraged by two decades of writing stage and radio dramas.

Each piece of writing I undertake, whether a story, novel, play, or poem, begins with an image.

I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take.

The critique of social inequality, which is very much a part of my story, came about naturally from my recollection of Huck and Tom and the controversy surrounding [Mark] Twain's use of them and from my own passionate interest in civil rights, animal rights, and the right of Earth to survive humankind's reprehensible neglect of its stewardship.

I do seem to favor a deathbed confession as the occasion for my dramatic monologues.

Many of my short fictions use theatre as a metaphor for situations in which characters find themselves estranged from the larger, uncontrollable world that may or may not lie beyond the proscenium arch.