Something I found while writing 'Alice & Oliver' - a book that is unquestionably a work of fiction, but which also borrows details from my own life - is that writing the truth often requires invention and imagination.
— Charles Bock
I was not a happy or popular or happy-with-myself kid, and I wasn't an especially motivated student, either.
I was an unhappy teenager, and there's just no way around it.
After Diana passed, I did not believe for one second that I would remarry or that I would be in love again.
Art, you know, art and fiction, especially in big books, you know, it takes a while.
As I matured, I became a smarter person, a more sensitive person, a more thinking person.
I had a string of really awful jobs in Manhattan where my whole point was to do as little work in the world as possible so I could hoard time to write.
Really, I've worked my whole adult life at fiction, to try and write fiction.
Writing books takes a long time, and one thing a writer must do is learn to live with his or her project.
I remember, even in college, reading Cliffs Notes about a book and thinking to myself, 'Geez, that sounds like a good book. I should probably read it.'
It's been wonderful to hear so many excited and intelligent responses to 'Beautiful Children,' not only from reviewers but also from the people coming out to my readings.
I was always small and thin. I wasn't the kid who got invited to parties.
I always thought of Caesars as the gold standard. I had exactly one date in high school, and my father knew someone who got us comped here for the Sammy Davis Jr. show. We heard 'Candy Man,' 'Mr. Bojangles' - the whole list. And then my date and I went off to the dance - homecoming, I think - where she pretty much ignored me.
Let's just say I'm a believer in universal, single-payer healthcare insurance.
My grandfather was a pawnbroker, and when I was in first or second grade, my parents opened their own store. I probably learned to count by putting pawn tickets in numerical order in the back room of the shop.
I really love my chosen craft. No matter whether it's disappearing or disappeared from the mainstream, that's really been where my mind and heart is.
My parents have a pawnshop in Downtown Las Vegas for quite awhile. I grew up seeing people come in and want - need - money so they could go and gamble again or so they could pay their bills or whatever reason, and try and sell items that were of value to them.
I'm not really a meditator. I'm, like, a napper.
I didn't have a lot of great jobs. I was a third-shift legal proofreader. I did office work for people where a friend might say, 'Hey, we need someone,' in his office, and then I will have a month or two weeks or whatever somewhere. I was - I taught fiction workshops.
I do think that people go to Las Vegas for 'whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' They go for the spectacle.
I flatter myself to even imagine I could have had a medical practice. There's no way. I'm not scientific or disciplined enough, lots of things.
When I was in college, I could only write on a WordPerfect program.
I've always been less interested in the person on the top of the Bellagio than I am at the person whose house got moved to create the Bellagio.
To me, fiction is the single best way there is - to me, it's the most profound way - of dealing with questions that have no answers.
It wasn't a leap for me to go from not wanting to be in my body as a teenager, not wanting to be in my house, to thinking, 'What would happen if I had disappeared?' And then going from writing scenes of angry kids to thinking a little more about the parents and what their lives would be like.
The literary world is filled with good and generous people. But then that's what writing is all about - empathy.
Las Vegas is a great place to be from, not to live in.
A woman at a bookstore in Brattleboro, Vt., put Castle Freeman Jr.'s novel 'Go With Me' in my hand, and I took it to be nice. 'Yeah I'll probably read five pages,' I thought. But once I started, I could not put it down.
In English, I never did the reading when it was assigned. If a paper was due on Friday, my attitude was, read half the book on Tuesday, the second half on Wednesday, and write the paper Thursday night. Sometimes, I'd just read the Cliff's Notes and skip the book altogether.
My sister, who is a wonderful and beautiful actress now, when she was 11 or 12, she would go out and take pictures of the punk parties in the desert. She used to have blue hair, and she got kicked out of Las Vegas Day School for having blue hair.
I very much loved my late wife, Diana Joy Colbert, and I'd rather hold onto what I can.
'Death Of A Salesman,' 'Streetcar Named Desire,' these are the things that, when I was growing up, made me want to be an artist.
A writer has to write something that they're - sit down with or are interested in every day of their life.
When I was in grad school, I wrote one early story that was Vegas, and then I stayed away from it. I was trying to expand and do different things. I knew I would write about it, but I stayed away for as long as I could.
My quilting is dookie. All needlepoint-related things I should do better on, being honest.
Too often in this world, the things you root for - whether sports teams or spouses to recover from horrible diseases - don't quite pan out.
What I try to do is write about forgotten people, and, in a certain sense, we're all forgotten.
Every author dreams of the kind of attention that 'Beautiful Children' has received in the press. Obviously, it's a shock whenever it happens. So yeah, I'm as surprised as everybody else.
One older brother of mine collects comics, and when I was younger, I collected them, too.
I never ran away, but I was very unhappy as a teenager. I felt like a complete nonentity, and I very tangibly have memories of not wanting to be here - in my body.
It's understandable why someone might not want to take on a book they think is emotionally hard.
