For me, addiction never really included telling myself that everything was okay. By the time I was deep in my addictions, I knew things were pretty bad and I had no control over them.

I like a text that reminds the reader its a text sometimes.

You can't hide behind the guise of fiction. No matter how autobiographical a fictional scene is, you can always tell the reader - in protecting yourself - that you made it up.

It took me seven years of writing before I published my first story. And then, the publications trickled in over the next five years.

I don't teach narrative theory by itself anymore, but I kind of use it when critiquing student manuscripts. So, it works its way in there, whether I like it or not.

I think every narrator is an unreliable narrator. In its classic definition - an unreliable narrator is one who reveals something they don't know themselves to be revealing. We all do that.

I'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.