I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?

I did a lot of reading of the Bible and became fascinated with the idea of the Rapture. It's pretty wild. I hadn't heard of it until I was in college.

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.

I think I was always writing books that had very clear scenic structures. I do tend to write in scenes. I do tend to have a fair amount of dialogue. And I do tend to use stories that don't sprawl all over the place, that have a very sharp focus in terms of how they unfold in time.

You could say that this book is ripped from the headlines, but that wouldn't be fair. Bret Anthony Johnston's riveting novel picks up where the tabloids leave off, and takes us places even the best journalism can't go. Remember Me Like This is a wise, moving, and troubling novel about family and identity, and a clear-eyed inventory of loss and redemption.

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.