I still consider it a summer job, though. So, I try to maintain that summer job as long as I can. But it's exciting to be able to have the opportunity to do things I always dreamed of as a kid.

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

Places I've lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it's roots in New Orleans and went crazy.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

I write music all the time. When I talk about having writer's block, it's more to do with lyrics than anything else.

Critics or musicians who attack me are jealous of my success and the fact that I make people feel so happy.

I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.

I've always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that.