I Prayed To Trees. This

Don’t Be In Too Much Of A Rush To Be Published. There Is Enormous Value In Listening And Reading And Writing—and Then Putting Your Words Away For Weeks Or Months–and Then Returning To Your Work To Polish It Some More.

It Seems To Me That We Can’t Explain All The Truly Awful Things In The World Like War And Murder And Brain Tumors, And We Can’t Fix These Things, So We Look At The Frightening Things That Are Closer To Us And We Magnify Them Until They Burst Open. Inside Is Something That We Can Manage, Something That Isn’t As Awful As It Had A First Seemed. It Is A Relief To Discover That Although There Might Be Axe Murderers And Kidnappers In The World, Most People Seem A Lot Like Us: Sometimes Afraid And Sometimes Brave, Sometimes Cruel And Sometimes Kind.

A Library Is The Door To Many Lives.

What Exactly Did People Do When They Had All The Time In The World And Could Do Whatever They Liked?

I Entered A Poem In A Poetry Contest Around 1987, And The Poem Won And I Received $1,000 For It. That Made Me Realize That Maybe What I Was Writing Was Worth Reading To People. After That, For Some Reason, I Turned To Novels And I've Written Mainly Novels Ever Since.