Leo Cuellar recently interviewed me for the magazine of St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where I used to teach. We talked about process, making the move from writing short stories to novels and vice versa, and research, among other things. My favorite question of Leo’s and one I’ve never been asked before was: Can you say something about what your new novel is about without mentioning characters; just setting, feeling/idea(s) and comparisons to other works of art?

I’ll mention Nick Cave’s album “The Boatman’s Call”, in particular a song called “Brompton Oratory”. The original title of the novel, A Little Bit Later, is from a Wilco song. I’ll also mention the epigram, which comes from Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer: “To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

Also, today I noticed that my author page has gone up at Random House. Yay! There’s nothing actually on it yet, except for a blank book cover and the title Untitled Richmond, but it’s there. Writing and publishing a novel is such a long, exhausting process, it comes as a great relief and something of a shock when, at long last, one sees tangible evidence that the book will soon be in the world. Many thanks to two very instrumental people: my editor, Caitlin Alexander, and my agent, Valerie Borchardt.