All the books I was reading as a teenager were about individuals having adventures. So I thought that was what writers were supposed to do: to go out on the road.

After school, I got a job in a shop in Hollywood and shared an apartment with a friend. I promptly lost my job and got evicted from my apartment, and that happened several times.

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.

I'm never doing anything by rote. I'm only on thin ice, and I think that that's a good place to be. I feel like when you push yourself like that, the rewards can be pretty great.