(excerpted from a recent interview on my process of writing, which you can read in its entirety HERE.)

I have heard many authors – young and old alike – equate their necessity to write with the largely autonomous process of breathing: to go without writing would be to go without oxygen; it is what keeps us writer-types alive.

With that said, I write what I do because each work is a unique, self-standing part of who I am, and there are many parts.

In the words of Hugh Prather, “There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorize, a part that wants to sculpt, a part that wants to teach…To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just one thing in life, would kill off large parts of me. Rather, I recognize that I live now and only now, and I will do what I want to do this moment and not what I decided was best for me yesterday.”

Each work that I publish is a part of me. In the world of publishing, though, that is not necessarily a good thing that my work is all over the genre map. Agents and publishers like focused little writing experts, machines that crank out the formulaic pieces that build credentials, establish authority in a particular area, and make good dough from all that intensely focused concentration.

This is, in large part, why I am poor.

I write what I do because it is in me, and I wish to share it with my readers. If that means that I break the conventional genre barriers from time to time, then so be it. Two things, however, you will find consistent in my work.

First, I stick to the line of truth. My writing always falls a little to the left, or a little to the right, of the truth line. My fiction is very realistic, and my nonfiction is very story-like. I respect the line that separates fiction from nonfiction, though it is sometimes hard to tell what is real and what is not.

Second, regardless of what I publish, I try to reach into the inner sanctuaries of my characters, to get to the core of the human condition that is relevant and relatable to each of us. Writers need to touch their readers in some capacity, and I believe that is done through my characters and the way they experience the events in my stories.