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As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?


· I wanted to go to Harvard (like John Adams), become a lawyer (like John Adams) and become President (like John Adams).  I may have seen the musical “1776” a few too many times.
· As it turned out, I attended Harvard (for a semester in junior year) and was part of “Adams House” (named for John Adams).
· However, after taking the LSATs, I decided to ask real lawyers what they did, and found that very few of them were happy and almost none did things I liked doing. They seemed highly specialized in technical, even esoteric topics, whereas I am a broad thinker.
· So I went to Norway on a Fulbright and never looked back.




What inspired you to write your first book?


· Sheer terror.
· Seriously, Shadows in Summer is a ghost story inspired by real events. Our family went through two years of the oddest set of circumstances anyone should ever have to face. The aftermath of an apparent haunting in our home – I say apparent, mind you – required some kind of “therapy.” Writing was mine.


Do you have a specific writing style?


· I suppose everyone does. People tell me I keep them guessing and forcing them to read another chapter and another – this is like thriller writers (take your pick – Dan Brown, Harlan Coben). But at the same time, I have a penchant for references and erudition, descriptions of place, culture, food, etc. and deep characterizations that are more typical of literary work (Barbara Kingsolver, Umberto Eco).
· In the Gothic tradition, I look to Oscar Wilde, Peter Straub, and Shirley Jackson, and revere the work of Hawthorne and Ambrose Bierce.


How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?


· I grew up in a blue-collar world, but live in a world of white collars – even privilege.
· Many of my characters are faced with these kinds of strains. Sociologists call us “straddlers.”
· My classical education (Jesuit training, Latin/Greek, etc) influences me tremendously, and I strive to write on three levels (as Homer did): 1) story, 2) symbol, 3) technique. The third level will not and should not be obvious to the reader, but will emerge to anyone who cares to study “how he did that.” For example, to establish one character’s voice, I made sure that every noun and verb in the first few pages of her narration came from French.


How did you come up with the title for your book(s)?
· My wife always talked about “Shadows,” so I wanted that word in the title, but it seemed lonely by itself. The image of sunlight being stronger in the summer, and therefore the creator of shadows wound its way into the book, and ultimately into the title.

How much of your work is realistic?


· If you mean “taken from real life,” then I would say about half of the scenes bear some resemblance to real events. But I twist things around a lot, and none of the characters are “real”


Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?


· I grew up in the theatre – I was on the stage from age seven, and really was “performing” constantly. So for me, dialogue comes naturally. But description is harder. And the balance between too-little and too-much can be hard to strike, especially when writing multiple perspectives. This is something I worked hard on over the four years of writing Shadows in Summer.


Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?


· It’s hard to pick one. I love John Steinbeck and Saul Bellow, Truman Capote and Thomas Wolfe. But as regards haunted house books, I would say Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House). She is one of the VERY few writers who managed to get the balance between scary and realistic – and keep a sense of ambiguity throughout (a la Henry James’ Turn of the Screw). Horror writers tend to allow things to get out of control; literary types don’t get the “scary” part right. 
· See Roald Dahl’s introduction to his collection of ghost stories – he read over 700 of them, many by great writers like Dickens, et al. – yet he found only a couple dozen that were really scary.
· For me, Jackson manages both, in an extended work. Just terrific.


If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?


· Not a word.


What advice would you give to writers just starting out?


· 1) To be able to write well, you must be able to READ well (see for instance Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why), and you must read a great deal. Read the best material you can find. Discuss it with fellow lovers of books. Know your genre cold. Know who YOUR favorite authors loved to read – Hemingway said Hamsun “taught him to write”; Capote loved Karen Blixen. Try to read at least one hour for every hour you write, and you should write at least one hour every day.
· 2) Be not afraid. You can do this! If you’re fourteen, you can write! If you’re 40, or 70 – you can write! You just have to give yourself permission to do something different, something creative, something from the heart.


What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?


· This changes a great deal with time, and varies by genre. But for me personally, writing is most compelling when it conveys a sense of “authenticity,” immediacy, freshness. As if the writer is recounting an experience they had on the bus coming over to see you that same day. 
· How to achieve this? Ah, if only there were a recipe. The best trick I know is from Hemingway. Sit there at the beginning of each session and refuse steadfastly to write ANYthing until you can find “one true thing” to scribble. It may take an hour, but if you are stubborn enough, it will come. It may not be worthy of Socrates, but a true thing will come, and you can build on it. If you start with something false, no good can come of that session, and you may as well go play tennis that morning.
· Of course there are technical things too – one shouldn’t make mistakes of language except on purpose. One should be very aware of time and place, and this should come through in the details – it is forever to Joyce’s credit that he walked the streets of Dublin to make sure his characters could actually get to where they needed to be on Bloomsday; it is forever a flaw in Shakespeare’s brilliant canon that he placed a striking clock in ancient Rome in Julius Caesar.  Details matter. 
· Adjectives are precious – use them wisely, and by all means use UNUSUAL ones. Make up words as you need to – the dictionary is there to be fattened!
· Finally, good writing is not static, but DYNAMIC. It moves from humble beginnings to dramatic climaxes like a river from its source to great niagaras. If you keep things moving, your reader will go with you. If you wallow in side-pools, you will bore her, or risk losing her altogether.