I wanted to make an album that takes a journey through all my favorite periods in music and then culminates in something that will most likely end my career.

I had a great job with the railroad, a good salary.

I used to play a lot of electric guitar. I don't really consider myself a guitar player anymore. Then I got really into how the pickups work. And winding and de-winding Telecaster pickups. And then building Telecasters. And I became more fascinated with making them than I was with actually playing them. So it's a slippery slope.

There are no expectations other than those I place on myself to be a great father and husband.

I'd stand on the side of the road when I was just a little girl singing on trash cans. People would roll down their windows saying, 'Isn't she cute'. I had a vivid imagination. I always pretended it was some big stage.

Once the travel guide came out and won an award, once I got an MFA in creative writing, once I sold my next novel, I finally started telling people that I was a writer. I remember how special that year felt.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.