Hardest thing: creating something out of nothing - the first draft is torturous.

My Italian-American heritage, of which I'm very proud and with which I identify strongly, surfaces in several of my novels.

As my early drawings warned me, where humans go, lions and tidal waves follow.

Hardest thing: creating something out of nothing - the first draft is torturous.

All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.

Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.

I write to find out what the story means to me, that is what I try to do especially with the first draft.