KMWR: I tracked down your piece "The Ticks Will Eat You Whole" in the Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 Anthology and very much enjoyed that story! You discussed with the editor the seed of the story, and I was intrigued by what you said about the "what-if" gear that grinds before you write. Would you say that gear is the main driver for your writing process? 

ANS: For the most part. One of my writing profs once said, "Interest is a muscle that must be exercised to grow." So as writers, we have to stay interested in the world around us, and sometimes a person, an image, a snippet of someone saying something, can get the "what if" gear grinding. It might take hours, days, or months for it to finally figure out how to make that work as fiction, but it all fits together eventually. Sometimes, it's an interesting combination of two completely "what if" scenarios. Those can be pretty exciting. 

KMWR: When did you first begin writing noir and what do you love most about writing in it? What have you learned about yourself through the genre?

ANS: I've wanted to be a crime writer since I was a kid, really. After the Hardy Boys and Three Investigators books, I started reading the classics of the private eye and noir genres. My library had a lot of the Vintage/Black Lizard editions of Himes, Hammett, Chandler, and Jim Thompson. I devoured as many as I could. It wasn't until college, when I discovered James Ellroy, James Lee Burke, and George Pelecanos, that I realized how stylish and edgy crime fiction could be. Combine that with my lit and writing studies - Flannery O'Connor was huge for me - and a bit of the apocalyptic Pentecostal religion my family was involved with for a time, and I definitely realized I liked the dark side of storytelling. I wrote about things that scared me. 

I'd say I came from a "cautious" family. My grandmother was a constant worrier about every little thing, and that fear passed down to me and at least one of my younger sisters. I wasn't one to dive into trouble due to fear, mostly. And that followed through in what I wanted to write. Noir appealed because it was *all* trouble, and it gave me the sort of feelings horror flicks deliver to horror fans. I'm fascinated and afraid of it all. I would never say I'm trying to glamorize violence and cruelty, but those things are powerful in art, and when written well, they can terrify the bejeezus out of you. 

And sometimes, it can be darkly hilarious, too. The absurdity of noir is its secret weapon.

KMWR: "She Calls Me Baby, She Calls Everybody Baby" won me over with its deviant teachers who would rather eliminate Vance's body rather than harm Vance's feelings. Can you talk more about how these characters and their actions came about?

ANS: I'm so glad Feign published this story! I'd heard some other feedback that made me think no one could get into it. So this is a thrill to share it. I don't know why this came into my head, but I remember a friend in grad school giving my shoulders a quick rub while several of us were talking in one of the classrooms, which was a little uncomfortable to me. One, I don't like shoulder rubs or massages. I don't have the same aversion to touch that Vance does, but...kinda? I've always been a bit creeped out by too much casual touching and go out of my way not to do it. And two, I guess it felt like it was something to be "saved" for people who are dating. So when I remembered this purely innocent, nothing-burger of a moment, the what if gear started up again, and I grossly exaggerated this "touch thing" with Vance and decided to throw in some Hitchcockian tit for tat, femme fatale stuff. But then, hey, what if all of these supposed friends were backstabbing cheaters and liars, even the ones you'd least suspect? And so on it went.

KMWR: There is an ongoing attention to touch, both Vance's revulsion then his engaging in it, and then the violence of it at the end (the near-strangling by Teddy). I'm wondering if you can talk more about the tragicomedy surrounding Vance's relationship to touch.

ANS: I would definitely say I'm a guy who'd think, "How much microscopic dog poop is on the bottom of her feet?" like Vance does at one point. It's a complicated fetish - he loves women's feet, but he's a bit of an OCD germaphobe - except when it comes to Pia for some reason. Maybe the newness or wrongness of it to him short-circuits the phobia. I'm sure after a while with Pia, it would've come up again. And Teddy illustrates the sort of man Vance is both in awe of because of his confidence and smoothness with women, and hates because of the very same things. So Pia choosing Vance over Teddy - even if he's afraid something is wrong about it - is a big deal to him. But he's terrified now of losing Maeve, unaware he's already lost her, really. And we find out Teddy's not as confident as he seems, since he looks at Vance as a huge obstacle towards keeping Maeve for himself. 

So it's a complicated, contradictory, fethishy and conniving farce.

KMWR: Finally, are you working on anything new? And what are you reading right now?

ANS: I've spent the last two years really working on a lot of short stories, putting aside novels for awhile because I've kind of given up on doing any mainstream work and just sticking to the indie lit world. And short stories have been really a lot more fun. They allow your imagination to run wild rather than get in a rut, and you're changing up the entire story, cast of characters, plot, setting, and tone every week or so. I've got a handful of shorts looking for homes right now, and I've finally started work on something I think will turn into either a full novel, or a set of three novellas (a nod to Jim Harrison). There's another partial novel I will return to in the next year, I think, based on a short story of mine called "Warpig." I'm always working on something, even when I'm on a little vacation, like the last few weeks. 

I've got - unbelievably - four books forthcoming between August and sometime in 2026, which is wild. On four different indie presses, too. One novella, one short story collection, and two novels that have been through the wringer for several years, finally each getting a real home. 

My reading is all over the place, although Jess Walter and Richard Lange have been astounding me lately. I also recently read my friend Vicki Hendrick's manuscript for a wonderfully weird book called Chez Usher she's currently shopping. Lucky me. Quite a bit of my reading is submissions for Revolution John, the lit mag I inherited from Sheldon Lee Compton. Amazing work coming in from all over the place. I'm also reading a book about cyclists who specialize in climbing. Very bike-nerdy, I know.

I've got a subscription this year to Malarkey Books, and they have delivered some wild books. I also just got The King of Video Poker by Paolo Iacovelli for CLASH Books, and Flunker by cult legend Dennis Cooper from Amphetamine Sulphate. I love what the indie presses are doing. The best writers writing today are doing it for indies.  

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