I grew up across the street from Lake Michigan, and the lake helped raise me, helped form me. I couldn't see the end of it, could only see where it kissed the horizon, and that made me feel spacious inside, made creative possibility feel endless.

“I’m an archivist,”  I proclaim to my partner, as I stop (for the fourth time) to take a picture of a piece of paper in a closed tattoo shop that reads “Sorry, no piercing,” and, later, a piece of graffiti that says “FUCK FUCK FUCK.” As Michel de Certeau affirms, “There is a rhetoric of walking.” The patterns of our movements make a shape we can’t see. 

There’s a pink scar stretching from my lower lip to the bottom of my chin, where a wakeboard carved my face in two in a freak boating accident the summer I was fifteen. It’s faded now, to the point where people who meet me say they never even noticed it until I pointed it out. In the weeks following the accident, bright blue sutures crawled down my face, drawing the gaze of every person who passed me on the street. 

Running eight miles every morning wakes me up, eases my stress level, gives me space to ponder Big Thoughts, keeps my body in shape -- and sometimes also helps me conduct research for my novels.

Let me explain. 

I’ve been teaching in some capacity for the last eight years.  My first time teaching was as part of my MFA program at Florida Atlantic University.  I was technically a graduate student instructor, responsible for a two/two course load of English Composition.  All the instructors got a textbook filled with essays meant to inspire argumentative writing.  Freshman had to take the class, so the rosters were always full and we got a teaching stipend–it was a win-win situation.