Q: What do you mean, "Back when I was reading."

A: I read more books before I started writing.

I still read, but not like I did.

Q: Did what you read form you, as a writer?

A: I write books like I like to read.

I write books like New York doesn't publish.

City of Night. John Rechy.

Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Jr. Terry Southern.

Seven Stories Press published Barry Gifford and Howard Zinn. Kurt Vonnegut.

Q: Two of your heroes are Charles Bukowski and Charles Willeford.

A: Yes. Bukowski had one publisher. John Martin, Black Sparrow Press.

Willeford published paperback originals.

His two major works, before the Hoke Moseley series, were Cockfighter and The Burnt Orange Heresy, and neither one caught hold.

One reviewer said of his career, before Miami Blues, that he was, "...destined for oblivion, lacking even cult status."

Q: You have a cult.

A: Yes. The Buzzard Cult.

Or Benthos. Bottom Feeders.

Mouth Breathers.

Good Old Boys.

Q: Hick Lit.

A: Don't you love a title like Swamp Hoyden.

Q: Richard Dobson has a song about a guy coming out of a liquor store with a dirty blonde and a rag-top car and a grin that said, "Who could ask for anything more."

A: In Payday, Rip Torn says to the groupie he spent the night, or the weekend in the motel with, "I'm fucked-out, darlin'."

Q: Are you apprehensive about using the word motherfucker at the junior college, a trade school, with Christian values, and conservative beliefs, politically?

A: A little.

I don't know of another word that will do.

MFWIC means what it means.

dem means what it means.

It's part of the meaning of dem that they don't want you to say how things really are.

They want you to pretend they're different.

Q: They want to get you to agree things are the way they see them. Not the way you see them.

A: Yes. It's important to them.

If you can get a person to disavow the evidence of his own senses you're halfway home.

It demoralizes a writer to knuckle under.

Q: They want to break your spirit.

A: School and the military soften you up.

Especially professional school. Graduate school.

It's a rare bird who makes it through graduate school the way he went in.

MBA programs have ruined more writers than you can imagine. They have watered down and tarted up our literature.

What's a country without a robust literature?

Q: Second-tier.