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

I've spent a lot of time in prisons, first doing legal work and later, teaching.

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.

We don't want emotion handed to us - that's not emotion. You have to build and come from the reader's soul.

If a novel or a story works, you don't stop thinking about it; it doesn't truly end.

I beat a story to within an inch of its life - that's when I know its done. Not before, not after.

I sometimes wonder if our memories are a myth. We think we remember, but we are remembering the story and not the actual event?