Florida is a most unusual place. It can feel at once stifling and like anything is possible there.

I lived in Boston for three years, and during that time, I wrote my first collection of stories, 'What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us;' other stories that didn't make it into the collection; and several failed novel openings.

When I'm absorbed in a work of fiction, time and place melts away, as though I've drifted away from my usual reality and been absorbed into another.

I love many realists but very strongly resist the notion that realism presents a less stylized, more authentic version of the world.

I think where a writer falls on the realism/non-realism continuum has a lot to do with their sight, as in, 'This is how I see the world.' And it seems my sight is off-kilter and kind of strange, but I come by that naturally; I'm not consciously pushing toward a particular point on the continuum.

I love creating mysteries, but I am terrible at solving them.

I think my favorite horror films are really grounded in human psychology, which is to say I think through sort of extreme dislocations of reality.

Whether it's via the monstrous or the paranormal, horror actually can really get at some of the most fundamental human questions.

Fiction accesses a certain kind of truth through artifice. I love to create worlds that operate on their own terms.

I have no problem quitting things, because I have a horror of boredom.

I'm such a first-person writer.

I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't.

I think that one thing about teaching is you're trying to communicate your thoughts about a work to a group of people who may or may not share that sentiment. This has forced me to become a lot more articulate about what I respond to and what I don't respond to in fiction.

If I'm really rolling with a short story, I work on it everywhere and end up with a finished draft in a couple months, but a novel really demands that I step out of my life and vanish into the world of the book.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

With both novels and short stories, I think a lot in terms of character arcs, when it comes to endings.

In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface.

There's the public self that we present to the outer world. There's the private self, which maybe takes more time to access. But ultimately, what I'm most interested in as a writer is a few notches below the private self.

Florida is a very idiosyncratic place in a lot of ways - as are many parts of our fine country, but one could say Florida is particularly idiosyncratic.

Holy cow - everything about writing a novel is hard for me.

In terms of specific cinematic influences, certainly I'd recommend 'Juan de los Muertos,' and I also really love this French zombie movie - 'Les Revenants' - where the dead reanimate for no apparent reason.

Havana is a uniquely complicated city and contains a great many histories.

I was born and raised in Orlando, where the economy and culture has been powerfully shaped by tourism, and so I've long been interested in how we narrate the places we visit, how the gap between what we see and what we know manifests when we're traveling.

I think writing, or any form of art-making, is a way to prepare for not being here. Not that we can. No amount of preparing can really ready us, in a meaningful way, for the great void that awaits us all.