I do miss the Chocolate City of my youth.

Many fathers and sons never get to reconcile their differences or come to an understanding that fills the gap between love and expectations.

The Turnaround' isn't even really a crime novel. But you need conflict to make a novel, any kind of novel, and I don't know any other way to do it than crime.

After college, I spent a decade working the kinds of jobs that I write about - bartender, shoe salesman, kitchen man - while voraciously reading novels.

I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.

Life would be pretty boring if I didn't explore. It's about letting my ears take me on an adventure to soak in everything I can.

There's going to be space travel at some point.

The simplest way out of the puzzle of time travel is to say that it can't be done. That's very likely the right answer. However, we don't know for sure.