What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
Seeing my words on the screen as I type them in and thinking “Someone is going to read this”.
What's the story behind your latest book?
Houlihan’s Wake is set in the fictitious former-hippy hangout of Playa Chisme (“Gossip Beach”) on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. The first time I visited the real place, I noticed a middle-aged man sitting on the beach in the lotus position, bare-headed under the noonday sun. When I asked about him, I was told that he was a US citizen who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had decided to come to Playa Chisme in order to die in a beautiful place. The last time I visited, years later, he was still there. I took up the idea of someone going to a beautiful place in order to die, and finding it remarkably hard to do so. Houlihan, though, is young and healthy except in his mind. Like Joyce’s Finnegan, he gets to attend a party that could have been his own funeral.
Read more of this interview.