To me experimental fiction ultimately is about the experiment and I'm not interested in experiments for their own sake, and if anything I've always steered a bit clear of that kind of thing, because it seems gimmicky to play around with text rather than do the work of telling a story and creating characters.

In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.

One of the reasons I'm not so keen on people calling me an "experimental" writer is that it suggests the work is about the experiment, when it's always the opposite - any "experimentation" is dictated by the material.

I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.

In my early twenties the nature of conservatism itself changed. When I identified as a fourteen-year-old conservative, it was closer to what we today think of as libertarianism - conservatism, at least for me, had been defined by Jeffersonian credos like "the best governed are the least governed" and "I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" that were very idealistic and romantic to a kid.

It became inescapable that as conservatives were wrong about people of color, they were also wrong about women. They were wrong about gay people. The only individual freedoms they seemed to get exercised about were the freedom to make a profit and the freedom to own a gun.

Though energy and inspiration diminish, experience grows - the theme of parents and kids, for instance.