Growing up, I didn't know anybody who didn't have a miner in the family. Both of my grandfathers were miners.
I believed, after writing 'Mrs. Kimble,' that I knew how to write a novel. I quickly discovered that I only knew how to write that novel. 'Baker Towers' was a different beast entirely; and I felt as though I had to learn to write all over again.
I was raised in a Catholic family, spent twelve years in parochial schools, and had extremely fond memories of my interactions with Catholic clergy.
William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
I've always felt that writing can be learned but not really taught. The best thing somebody can do for you is to put the right book in your hands at the right time. I grew up in a family where the right book was always being put in my hands.
Working in a prison, is, to my mind, similar in ways to working in a coal mine. It's going to scare away a lot of people.
Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.
I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.
I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.
As a young writer, I learned a lot about grammatical structure from reading plays, from performing the plays. I think that was a wonderful apprenticeship.
'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.
