And there are rules for crime fiction. Or if not rules, at least expectations and you have to give the audience what it wants.

I think, generally, the flawed anti-hero is much more interesting than the normal hero, and that's really what we're talking about here as it relates to outlaws or renegades.

I'm really fascinated by how the mob ethos permeates places like Las Vegas and Chicago. I have the book set in Las Vegas and Chicago for pretty specific reasons, some of which are that in both cases the mob history has become a tourist attraction - I'm actually doing a book signing in Las Vegas at The Mob Museum, which I am positively giddy about! - and I find that especially unusual. If you don't call these people "the Mafia" they're just a band of psychopaths killing people for profoundly dumb reasons.

I'm not Pollyanna - I know that my personality and my opinions and how I approach the teaching of writing maybe isn't exactly how it's done traditionally in the academy...wherever that academy is...but, you know, the academy is broken as it relates to many creative writing programs.

Sam took another sip of the pruno. It went down smoother this time, possibly because he no longer had feeling in his extremities.

It does no one any good to say their novel sucks if you don't have an idea how to make it better, how to approach it from different angles and make it work. It's obviously a subjective process, right? But the thing about subjectivity, at least in the classroom, is that you're banking on your professor's subjectivity to be both personal and professional - that he or she has some sense about the world outside the workshop.

I don't really have any advice for people who love each other and both happen to be writers, other than one of the two people in the couple better be slightly less in the clouds all day, or else you'll both starve to death. Humans really can't survive on just coffee alone, I don't think.