JOE R. LANSDALE

The Westerns have probably affected me more than any one thing, Western-related material. I love Westerns.

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.

My father, he couldn't read or write.

The bottom line is, Texas and its people are pretty much what most people mean when they use the broader term 'America.'

Sometimes, if I don't write for a day or two, I get backed up - it's like constipation.

Psychologists and psychiatrists send me cards and say, 'Hey, I love your books.'

I don't want people reading my books just because they're horror or mysteries. I want them to read them because they're Joe Lansdale books.

I work in the mornings almost exclusively.

Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.

My father was the first person to introduce me to self-defense and martial arts, which I've been doing all my life now.

My dad was born in 1909, my mother in 1914, I believe. Their life experiences were different than younger parents, so I grew up with a different perspective.

I was well under the spell of the old Gold Medal Crime novels when I wrote 'Savage Season,' and I wanted to write a modern version of that. I had tried the same thing with 'Cold in July,' and I wanted to give it another go.

Some people see writing as a white-collar career, but I've always approached it as a blue-collar writer.

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 come from blue collar. I'm very working class.

I started writing when I was 9. My mother told me it was before that, but that was the first I remember.

I turned out to be a tough, smart kid.

I think there are some people for whom words are like food.

I always disliked that anytime you had gays represented in - and there were some exceptions, certainly - but represented in popular fiction, they were usually the goofy neighbor next door, you know? And I just thought, 'Well, I know a lot of gay people, and they're just as varied as the heterosexual people I know.'

Texas is as alien as Mars.

I sold my first story when I was 21 in 1973.

'Night They Missed the Horror Show' is my signature story. It changed my life, so it remains my favorite.

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.'

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've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.