2. How much do you feel the geography has affected your writing style? Has the landscape of your youth altered the way you write?
That’s a great question. Most of my stuff takes place in small town America. It’s what I know best. I enjoy lifting the veil, looking behind the assumptions people have about the people and the way they live. The town I grew up in still has less than ten thousand people, and it’s doubled in number since my childhood. Life in these places, these bucolic daydreams–it carries a certain kind of precarious morality.  I mean, everybody knows everybody for the most part.  You go to school with the kids of the people your parents went to school with, the teachers remember when your parents went to school there, you go to a funeral and find out you’re related to some kid you’ve known peripherally for years and now you’re bonded in blood and death. You miss a church service and people take notice. There are secrets, secrets that sometimes come to light and destroy lives. I’ve seen it happen. And it’s more of a community tragedy than when it happens someplace bigger. There’s no anonymity. The bad guys you read about in the paper, they’re somebody else, someone you don’t have to know. But when the violence comes home, when the offender lives down the street, the pleasant daydream gets dark.

Southern Kentucky also holds a very special place for me. It was the first place I lived away from my hometown and it was an amazing five years. The landscape is particularly striking. It’s cave country; not only is there always the possibility of a sink hole opening up and swallowing you whole, the land itself is peppered with these limestone protrusions, like jagged teeth or compound fractures with pieces of bone bursting through the skin. And there are hundreds of these old family cemeteries with tombstones carved from the same limestone, so old and weathered you can barely make out the inscriptions. You can be walking in the woods, step through a tree line, and there you are on the final resting place of people who died one hundred years before you. At the right time and in the right company, or lack thereof, it can be disconcerting. I’m a skeptic, ask me if I believe in ghosts and I’ll tell you “no, of course not”, but I’ve walked the woods at night, alone with no moon and a bad compass. Shuffling slowly, then faster,  and then finally running with the copperheads and rattlesnakes, kicking up the last year’s decay in my wake, trying to escape the things I don’t believe in.

3. So far, what has been your biggest moment of satisfaction as a writer?
There have been many. I guess it’s just gaining this kind of Gestalt understanding of the process, not just the writing, but the hustle itself. I remember when I thought all I had to do was get published and the money would start rolling in and the readership would take care of itself.  I was wrong obviously, and while it isn’t a hard lesson to learn, it’s an obscure one to the uninitiated. Once you realize how much work is on you–not an agent (if you’re lucky enough to snag one of those), or publicist (ditto), or publisher.

Getting someone to believe in your product is definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s a single step. Then you have to do the work of winning over the readers. Once you embrace the reality of the hustle, it’s empowering because you realize you have a pretty significant say with regards to your own destiny. Now instead of waiting for people who are going to help me, I network, host readings, do signings. I’m doing everything I can to make it happen for myself. DIY isn’t for everyone, nor is it the only route, but if you get something started you’ll be a more attractive package. And then maybe, you’ll get some help.

But if you’re still interested in a single moment, I’ll tell you.  I’ve been publishing regularly since Bartleby Snopes took my first piece back in 2008. Each acceptance is special, but I sold my first story for a print magazine early last year. It was for thirty-five bucks and I remember barely getting through the email before my vision was blurred by honest-to-God tears. That moment, that step, was the validation I’d been wanting since I began. People can tell you they like your stuff all day, and don’t get me wrong, it helps keep up the fortitude, but for me, someone saying “I think this story is good enough to warrant parting with some of my cash”, that’s something else all together. It’s true that you need to believe in the work and all those other splendid little platitudes artists tell themselves; but the writing is a given and there are easier ways to get attention, so when you do manage to catch someone’s eye, it’s an amazing feeling. I guess this boils down to my greatest moment as a writer was the moment I realized that not only was I a needy bitch, but there were people out there willing to take a gamble on my work.

4. What is your process for writing your ideal story?
(What sort of things usually inspire your pieces? Do you outline, research, draft, what do you do when you sit down to write?)
I never know when inspiration is going to strike, what exactly it is that’ll pop out of the background of everyday life and present itself as “story worthy.” Sometimes it’s a memory coupled with something new. Sometimes it’s a conversation I’m eavesdropping on or even something as simple as a single image.  Generally, I mine my own life for details I find interesting–people I’ve known, places, desires–bits to play around with and subvert, and then see if anything comes of it.  For example, I’m working on a piece now for a guest spot with the guys from Zelmer Pulp. The setting is one I’ve never explored before, but I feel confident because it’s a place I have a lot of experience with. And since it’s new for me, there’s also a lot of excitement with regard to what I’m going to discover there.

You mentioned research–I’ll say that I rarely go into a project where I think, I really want to write about X, but I need to find out more.  Many people work that way, I just can’t or maybe “won’t” is a better word; I’m a lazy man. However, as I’m writing I usually find that I need to do research on the details, whether it’s how a particular person should speak or the natural range of some obscure beetle.  I like a certain degree of uncertainty when I’m working on something. The best stories I’ve written tend to start with a simple situation and then I just run with it. More often than not I end up going in a very different direction than I initially intended. An example would be my story The Bull, which Bartleby Snopes published about five years ago.  The premise was an underground, bare knuckle betting pool. The fighters were kids, trained and pushed into the life by their fathers. I wanted to focus on a single dad and his kid, and I approached it thinking that the kind of father that puts his boy into that kind of situation must be a real asshole. But as I worked on it, I discovered the family dynamic, the father’s history and his motivation, which in his mind made the fights not only right, but necessary. The result was a much more emotional piece, with more heart than I had imagined possible. My general rule is to have some idea of how to get to B from A, but always take the scenic route.

7. What are some of the projects do you have in the works? Do you have a book coming out?
I do have a book coming out. It’s a collection of shorts and flash entitled Dead Animals. Martian Lit is the publisher and I’m really excited about the release. Many of the pieces are previously unpublished and I’m really looking forward to people’s reactions to those in particular. It’s an eclectic mix of stories, some straight noir, some sex, a few bad habits mixed with, smashing bottles, fights, dashed hopes, rotten dreams, tree houses, war, alcohol, hash, Vegas, dogs, and death. It’s got something for the whole family.

I also have a flash novel coming out with Bartleby Snopes Press. The concept here was to try to tell a big story within the confines of the small story. Mine is called The Louisville Problem and will be available digitally in/around October 2013. This one is sort of an homage to noir great Jim Thompson.

Other than that I’ve always got a story or two in the works. I’m guest spotting with Zelmer Pulp on a couple of things: a zombie piece and something for a charity anthology. Should make for a great summer.