What are the differences in the way you approach writing contemporary fiction as opposed to historical fiction?
There really is no difference in the way I approach a novel with a historical setting from the way I might engage one with a contemporary setting The Tortilla Curtain or East Is East, for example. I come up with an idea or a subject, very broad in its scope and read and explore until it begins to narrow. Of course, with a novel set in current times, the metaphors are a bit easier because of the frame of reference in a historical piece, the author is constrained by the laws of anachronism. Usually. Though Stanley Elkin, in George Mills and elsewhere, was a wonderful exception. That is the beauty of writing fiction: there are no rules. How did you happen upon the story of Stanley and Katherine McCormick? What compelled you to write a novel about them? This one is easy. I moved from the gloomy dystopia of L.A. and The Tortilla Curtain to the gloomy utopia of Santa Barbara and Riven Rock. I discovered that those emerald hills of the Santa Ynez range conceal a whole psychopathologia of sad
