My Main Reader Was My Wife Sheila,

Writing About Women's Sexuality Is Very Scary For Me Because I'm Always Afraid I'll Get It Wrong.

I Think At A Certain Point The Book Develops A Certain Weight, Or Pressure. You've Been Pushing The Rock Up The Hill For A Long Time And Then It Starts To Roll And Things Do Start To Come Together In The Last Two Thirds.

You Can Recognize In Your Own Reading Habits What Writers Are Doing That Works And What Doesn't. I'm Becoming Much More Aware Of That After Reading A Decade Of Student Stories.

Fiction Is A Particular Kind Of Rhetoric, A Way Of Thinking That I Think Can Be Useful In Your Life. It Asks You To Image The World Through Someone Else's Eyes, And It Allows You To Try To Empathize With Situations That You Haven't Actually Experienced.

I'm Certainly Very Influenced By What You Would Call 'contemporary Headline Horror,' Stuff That Is True Crime Or For One Reason Or Another Catches Our Attention In The Media, Those Strange Cases That We End Up Obsessing About. I'm Always Influenced By Weird Anecdotes And News.