I have more than 100 legal pads filled with handwriting. Eight novels, two books for children, countless stories and essays.

I wrote a story about a man who is orphaned during the 1927 Mississippi River flood in Louisiana, and he's on the banks of levee, and he's starving. And there are other people starving, too. And he's so desperate, he's seven years old, that he finds a pig that's been abandoned. He kills it with a hammer, and he drags it back.

The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there's 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you're a good listener, and you can imagine how someone's talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not?

All I am is a writer and a mom.

I don't write about myself. I'm never in my books.

I never saw a gun until I was 24. I didn't grow up in Mayberry; I grew up in Southern California.