Something I found while writing 'Alice & Oliver' - a book that is unquestionably a work of fiction, but which also borrows details from my own life - is that writing the truth often requires invention and imagination.
I was not a happy or popular or happy-with-myself kid, and I wasn't an especially motivated student, either.
I really love my chosen craft. No matter whether it's disappearing or disappeared from the mainstream, that's really been where my mind and heart is.
I was an unhappy teenager, and there's just no way around it.
My sister, who is a wonderful and beautiful actress now, when she was 11 or 12, she would go out and take pictures of the punk parties in the desert. She used to have blue hair, and she got kicked out of Las Vegas Day School for having blue hair.
My parents have a pawnshop in Downtown Las Vegas for quite awhile. I grew up seeing people come in and want - need - money so they could go and gamble again or so they could pay their bills or whatever reason, and try and sell items that were of value to them.
I very much loved my late wife, Diana Joy Colbert, and I'd rather hold onto what I can.
I'm not really a meditator. I'm, like, a napper.
Art, you know, art and fiction, especially in big books, you know, it takes a while.
'Death Of A Salesman,' 'Streetcar Named Desire,' these are the things that, when I was growing up, made me want to be an artist.
I didn't have a lot of great jobs. I was a third-shift legal proofreader. I did office work for people where a friend might say, 'Hey, we need someone,' in his office, and then I will have a month or two weeks or whatever somewhere. I was - I taught fiction workshops.
A writer has to write something that they're - sit down with or are interested in every day of their life.
As I matured, I became a smarter person, a more sensitive person, a more thinking person.
I do think that people go to Las Vegas for 'whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' They go for the spectacle.
When I was in grad school, I wrote one early story that was Vegas, and then I stayed away from it. I was trying to expand and do different things. I knew I would write about it, but I stayed away for as long as I could.
I had a string of really awful jobs in Manhattan where my whole point was to do as little work in the world as possible so I could hoard time to write.
I flatter myself to even imagine I could have had a medical practice. There's no way. I'm not scientific or disciplined enough, lots of things.
My quilting is dookie. All needlepoint-related things I should do better on, being honest.
Really, I've worked my whole adult life at fiction, to try and write fiction.
When I was in college, I could only write on a WordPerfect program.
