Anyone who has read my books will know that I don't tend to use guides when I am travelling. It's not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact.
One similarity I see between peers and some of the people who read my books is that comics were definitely an outlet for us.
I'm fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.
Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.
I haven't been very enthusiastic about the commercialization of children's literature. Kids should borrow books from the library and not necessarily be buying them.
Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.
When all is said and done and the e-book is written about politics and the Internet, it is not going to be about the presidential election. It will be about the smaller elections in aggregate that have a huge effect on people's lives.
No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.
But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.
My Botswana books are positive, and I've never really sought to deny that. They are positive. They present a very positive picture of the country. And I think that that is perfectly defensible given that there is so much written about Africa which is...
There is something fascinatingly awkward about an author photo. I'm drawn to those glossy shots in the back of books, mostly because the subjects never look happy to be there.
Jesus never wrote a book; never went outside his country. His only legacy was to never compromise the good. And it was more than enough for the world.
I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.
I never minded the random scribblings of other readers, found them interesting in fact. It is a truth universally acknowledged that people write the darndest things in the margins of their books.
I need to have some depth in my characters. That's why they are all Bengalis. I can't imagine writing a book with someone called Saxena as the hero.
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even.
These secrets are not secrets per se but are truths hidden from public view. I had to write this book. There had to be a reason I survived to tell this story.
If getting addicted to something is just wrong, then I don't want to be right when it comes to books and music !! Those are the two things that can set anything in the world right...
If ten eyewitnesses are asked to describe a suspect, you'll get ten different variations. The same applies to readers and their opinions about the same book. And that's how it should be; we're not robots.
[On Jason Mashak's “I Was Trained to See Shadows”, in his poetry book SALTY AS A LIP:] A nice bit of smooth, full-bodied, surreal story telling. I like it.
See Amazon's bio on don loedding and a review of his first book of short stories"The Search For the Bearded Clam" and read inside "Global Warming:The Iceman Cometh".
