I started writing in the ’90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what a black writer has to do. I didn’t have the burden of representation.
In America, when you hear about the Underground Railroad, it’s so evocative. You think it’s a literal subway for a few minutes before your teacher goes on and describes where it actually was.
I admire Vegas’s purity, its entirely wholesome artificiality.
I’m of that subset of native New Yorkers who can’t drive.
I’m not a teacher; I’m not a historian. I’m trying to create a world for my characters.
You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can’t change people.
If you’re writing a detective novel or horror or sci-fi, you want to expand or reinvigorate the genre in your own little way.
I always try to mix it up with each book – changing tone, changing style keeps the work very vital for me.
I’m always trying to switch voices and genres.
Once I got to college, it seemed that the Hamptons were a little bit too posh for me and didn’t represent the kind of values I was embracing in my late teens. So, I didn’t go out there, except to visit my parents, for a long time. And then, after 9/11, I discovered it was a nice, mellow place to hang out.
I do write about race a lot, but I don’t think writers – of any shade or background or whatever – have to write about certain subjects.
Part of being in New York is being able to brag about what used to be there.
Zombies are a great rhetorical prop to talk about people and paranoia, and they are a good vehicle for my misanthropy.
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