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.

The biggest thing was that second person allowed me to trick myself into revealing more about myself. It gave me an authorial distance to get closer to the action and emotions, if that makes sense.

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.

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 like the fact that second person puts the reader in the story. It makes them, whether they like it or not, complicit in the action.

Some of the biggest challenges were, page after page, standing naked in front of the reader.