I m writing from a place of fear. My debut novel, "Don t Know Tough," was released on March 22, and six months later, I still fear the storm that could come of it.
Small towns can be desperate places, especially in an age of late-stage capitalism, when box stores and franchise restaurants and streaming services and crystal meth and Oxycontin have succeeded in homogenizing everywhere into nowhere.
I m writing from my office. It s more like the idea of an office than an actual office, a place I go to dream. The room I stumble toward every morning after the alarm rings at 5.
The smell of a bookstore has always drawn me in. It seems like a nonsensical thing, a romanticizing of a simple environment, I know. It s as if I m trying to make a castle out of a cottage. But buying a book in a real store lined with novels and nonfiction is far more appealing than purchasing one online.