I agree with the Lev Tolstoy quote completely, but I also feel like there's more to it. What is a happy family and an unhappy family? We're probably both of those things at the same time.

My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.

I agonize over things like this - the order of things, section titles, all this architectural sort of stuff. Takes me years to figure out.

Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here’s a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down.

A collection, for me, is a book of very diverse stories that somehow speak to each other, across wide geography, across time, years, decades.

I write when I have something to say and not when I don't. My time is better spent if I know I have nothing to say. I don't consider it writer's block; I just don't have anything to say.

I feel like there are too many words in the world, and I think silence is so much more powerful than the glut of words.