I’m not sure what to ask myself right now besides do you want some more wine? So for the purposes of this self-interview, I will answer the top ten questions people have asked me about The Wrong Way to Save Your Life since it came out, in order of most frequently asked.

One: How is Sophia?

My buddy Sophia is five years old and fighting a bitch of a brain tumor.

The Blogger’s Wife

1) I have an idea.
2) It’s called The Blogger’s Wife.
3) I’m not sure if it’s a story or an essay.
4) It’s about a woman who’s married to a blogger and if someone leaves a shitty comment on one of his posts she tracks down their IP address and shows up at their house and duct-tapes them to a chair

Later, we’ll study this day in history class. Books will have been written, documentaries made, references in political speeches and scientific research. It’ll be like April 4 or September 11; our first steps on the moon, the Challenger Explosion, Hurricane Katrina; everyone remembers exactly what they were doing the moment it happened.

I teach creative writing, and while thinking about this self-interview, I recently asked my students what they’re looking for when they visit literary websites. They said, overwhelmingly, that they want information about the writer’s process. Where did the stories come from and how do the writers live and write at the same time? There are eighteen stories in my collection Everyone Remain Calm, all really different, and I thought it would be interesting to share one aspect of the process in writing each story.