“…love complicates things as it should.”

Chipper? Builder? I'm neither. When I'm writing, I'm a blindfolded man trying to play tennis.

Well, I spent thirteen months in Anbar province in Iraq at a time when that area was undergoing tremendous change, and I was a public affairs officer so I got to travel a decent amount and talk to a lot of people who played a role in that.

If you want to be a writer, cultivate your tenacity, give up your social life, be prepared to disappoint your loved ones, believe in the solidarity of the imagination and the soul, and remember that no one likes a complainer.

Like the rest of the human race, I harbor post-apocalyptic fantasies (naturally, I’d be one of the survivors, along with a few loved ones). I wouldn’t mind joining the new human society that comes together at the end of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy ^…

I was the assistant to a wedding coordinator. Once I escorted a bride with impacted wisdom teeth down the aisle. Another, I watched a young ring bearer lose his lunch right on top of the pillow with the ring.

When I was a child, my favorite joke was: "Q: How do you sculpt an elephant? A: Take big piece of marble and carve away everything that doesn't look like an elephant." I'm still laughing at this one, cause that's how writing feels, except there's no stone, and you've never seen an elephant.

I like a story that can be told over a fire, all of its necessary waves striking the piece of beach you can keep in sight. One where I have to go into the night wondering how the survivors moved on with what happened. 

I’m definitely a chipper. I like the idea that the most perfect form of the story already exists inside a writer, and it’s her daily work to crack it open, shard by shard.