Thanks. The story came out of my experiences at University of North Texas during the early 90s. It was an incredibly strange time to be a penitent East Texas redneck at an art school. I was sort of on shaky ground with the English department at the time because I had had two really awful teachers in a row--one for lit and one for creative writing--and was actually thinking about going back to being an advertising major, when this story just sort of fell out of my head onto my word processor one night.  (It was the 90s, kids, we had word processors. And we were proud.)  Funny story, those two professors ended up dating each other a couple of semesters later, and I like to think that they found happiness and became less embittered, in general.  But I wrote the story in the 90s, and then picked it up uhhhh, 18 years later and thought, "This is kind of fun," and tweaked it a bit.  And here we are.


You have some extraordinary lines in here that are so memorable like, “My words crawl out with a chuckle. They are ugly millipedal things, a string of letters with insect legs.” And so many more inimitable images in this story. I could tell you wrote poetry just by reading this piece. What is your favorite genre to work in or do you have one?

My first writing love is poetry, so it is edifying for you to say that.  But I do switch hit with my writing quite a bit.  After I finished Card Tricks, I was pretty sure that I would never write another poem ever again...so I went back to short stories, tried to rewrite my novel ms Jukebox Loser, and then wrote a movie script that got picked up by Driven Entertainment.  But then I couldn't stay away from poetry and am now about 2/3 done with a manuscript tentatively titled "Normal as Scrod."  My wife says it is a depressing collection, but I think it's kind of funny.  We'll see how it goes.


What are you working on now?

Oh!  See above.  But I am also writing another movie script for Driven, and I hope that one will be well-received.  It is about a zombie apocalypse that is happening so gradually that no one notices it.


What are you reading at this time?

I'm reading some business books trying to get an educational assessment website started, a sort of true crime book about phone phreaks and hackers, and a contributor's copy of Chiron Review.   


Who would you consider to be your greatest influences in writing?

I like a lot of different people, so I wouldn't really know where to start there.  How about Vonnecairnsvegahudgiheller?