"The work is play for mortal stakes"*

In 1988, I lived in Huntsville, Alabama working for Olan Mills Portrait Studios as a traveling photographer, a job with slightly less dignity than scraping up road kill. I also wrote novels on big yellow legal pads, that I subsequently typed up when I had the chance (on a typewriter, even). My stuff was terrible; I had no sense of my own style, so I mimicked those of books I read (it's a wonder I survived my Joe Lansdale Drive-In period). I had not yet discovered my own voice.

Luckily, than...