Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.

When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.

You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If Id listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.

My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.

If no one heard your sounds then you did not really make them.

Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.