SmokeLong Quarterly

As a writer, what excites you, what moves you?

Viggo Mortenson. Seriously. All my writing is a desperate ruse to be noticed by him. Or Ralph Fiennes. Either one—literarily, of course.

In The Beekman Hill Window Contest, you have a number of botanical details that enrich the story. Is research an important tool for most of your work?

Research, to me, is a lovely euphemism for being a nosey parker. I do lots of “research,” even if it doesn’t appear in my writing.

How does setting affect your pieces, especially the shorter ones?

For shorter stories, I make the setting small. For longer stories, I make the setting very, very big.

So many people shy away from using parentheses, and yet you use them so well in this piece. How did that come about?

Dumb luck, I’m afraid. (Although, it did come off nicely, didn’t it?)

What word or phrase have you been dying to use, but you just haven’t found the right character or story?

I love you, Viggo.