My mother wanted me to be a reader. She was a reader. Even though she had an 11th-grade education, she was curious about all kinds of things - archeology, anthropology.
I've always done just pretty much what I wanted to do. I mean, I just did a thing for a small press called 'Zeppelins West' that's nothing but an absolute, over-the-top farce, almost like an Abbott & Costello, alternate-universe Western.
I was born in the '50s - 1951. So I grew up during that part of the '50s when everything was supposed to be at its best in America, they claimed, and then eased into the '60s.
I never felt poor. Our family euphemism was that we were broke, which I think psychologically gave you a different feeling. There were people far worse than we were.
My parents had become adults during the Great Depression, as had many of my aunts and uncles, so I got stories from all of them. They are fastened up inside me, and now and again, they have to come out.
I lived below the poverty line when I was young and starting out as a writer. But my wife and I kept trying to do things better, as anyone with ambition does. But just because you're trying doesn't mean you're always going to succeed.
Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.
My father always encouraged me to get an education, but he was also a guy that, when he was younger, had ridden the rails from town to town to box and wrestle for money.
I remember going to a theater once, and there was a stairway that wound its way out to the back. And I was very young, a small child, and I said to my mom, 'Why are those people going up those stairs?' And she said, 'You know, I don't know how to tell you this, I don't know how to explain it, but it won't always be that way, because it's wrong.'
Some people see writing as a white-collar career, but I've always approached it as a blue-collar writer.
People who grew up on my books are now able to get the point across to others that they're worth reading.
