What is your writing process?
The great writer Robert Louis Fontaine was asked that question. His reply was "I sit at my typewriter, open a vein, and bleed." That is the process I go through, too. Unlike writers such as Louis L'amour, who could write at any time and in any place, I struggle to write unless I am free from distractions. My best places to write are in remote, isolated, desolate areas of the American Southwest desert--- the environment that Zane Grey found conducive to writing.
Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
No, I have no idea what the first story I read was: does anyone remember what they first read? I doubt it. "The Monkey's Paw" short story by W. W. Jacobs was one of the most notable stories I read as a child. My mother and I read the short story together, frighting ourselves silly. The story is about making wishes, that would come true, that "changed fate" in ways that demanded a monstrous price.
"Desert Solitaire" also. Edward Abbey was the last of the great American writers.
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