I’ve spent this whole year going, “What?” I found out they bought the book — it was probably a week before I graduated, May 2008. It’s my thesis, with two extra stories. Refined and reordered. I wasn’t working on the book; I was working on a number of short stories. I combined two characters. One summer I wrote the story about when Dooley was a kid. I really liked writing that story. Some of them are just very satisfying to write. I didn’t know how to enter that story. I’m still not crazy about the ending. Had I to do it over, I would change it.

I’m always thinking about it. The other day I’m walking across the living room and all of a sudden, I’m like, “Ohh …” The right ending for “Keeping Her Difficult Balance.” I thought the ending on that was too heavy-handed in my mind. She falls, but it should’ve been more visual about the spray, and how the flames do this. That’s always really fun for me. I love writing really visual stuff. That’s kind of how I think, in pictures. Just have to translate it into words, and that takes a certain amount of time.

That came out of an actual assignment. I was so resistant to writing a story about southwest Louisiana, who knows why. Writing a story about the gay girls? Not going to do that. Amanda (Boyden) was really good about it: She would give everybody a really specific assignment based on whatever it was she could see you were resisting. That started out as a one-page. She would give you a scene: an ugly girl on her first date. That’s not how I think. I’m going to make her a kick-ass girl! The ugliness is going to be completely somebody else’s assumption; that won’t be her perception of herself. I’m very long-winded, so that was five pages. Delia, the character, grew out of that assignment. I’m really grateful to Amanda, because I really would never have written that, ever. That led to “Keeping Her Difficult Balance.” Then I thought, that Dooley kid could be her brother. Then this family history started evolving from there. And I had Luis and Pudge. I thought, what if Pudge was Luis’ father? That would be hilarious.

I got an email from agent, who I’d gotten my second year. I was a finalist in a Tennessee Williams short story contest. It was for “St. Luis of Palmyra,” the only one I had that was really a story, in my mind. He contacted me through the university. He’s forwarding an email from an editor, and I didn’t understand it. Does this mean they want to look at the story? So I forwarded it to Amanda. I said, “Amanda, what does this mean?” She said, “You got a book deal.” I said, “How can you tell?”

That’s where it all started. That one’s really close to my heart.

Bizarre! I was a bonus story to Dostoyevsky. The concept is, read the classics, and here’s a modern story that you might want to learn about. I find out a week before I graduate that I have a book deal, and that I have to say yay or nay. Are you kidding me, my thesis? I kept thinking they were going to go, “We like your thesis, we like these stories. What we need you to do is, change Delia to a boy, do this, do that. We need some product endorsement. … Just kidding. We thought we wanted it.” None of that happened. They were refined to make it linked.

Off and on, a long time. Except for maybe seven years out of 30. Broadmoor, briefly. Irish Channel, briefly. I remember Mid-City in the ’70s and ’80s. It was a different group of immigrants. Lots of old people. My favorite thing in the world is to get people to tell me the history of the neighborhood, what used to be where. I taught at Warren Easton for five years. ’84 to ’89. There was a horrible amount of crime. You would hear gunfire every night. The kids in homeroom would teach each other how to hold up people in the parking lot at the grocery store — because their arms were full, how easy that was. I was teaching people who had beaten a gay man to death because he asked them if they’d like to have sex. And instead of saying no, they got six of their friends and beat the crap out of him. But I loved the kids. I was very bad in high school, did not enjoy high school. I was very happy there. I don’t do well with systems that are very broken and very resistant to getting fixed.

I was a carpenter right up until storm. I’m from Lake Charles, been living here for 30 years. The storm trashed my shop. It was somewhat fortuitous. It’s not like it was fun right away, don’t get me wrong. It forced me to choose. The choice was so enormous; there was water up to the ceiling. I live on Palmyra, right near Jeff Davis.

I snuck in with a friend couple of weeks after the storm to see. I initially evacuated to Lake Charles. But, Hurricane Rita. That weekend I had gone to Lafayette to visit some friends. My shop was still underwater. I live on the second floor. The house had storm damage, so I lived on my balcony. Lots of people were doing that. I had a tarp. Go Red Cross! You could use it for everything.

I didn’t take any (time off). It was the most miraculous, underreported, heroic thing I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of. Little UNO, as broke as they can be, was completely wiped out. We’re all everywhere. One person finds another person finds another person, and the entire university was reconstructed online. Sometime in September we started classes online. This was going to be my third semester, beginning of my second year. Because everybody was so crazy, including me, it was the biggest relief in the world to have something to focus on. I was just there writing, and in the day going to look for someplace to charge my computer and find some WiFi.

Some of them, yeah. There was one story that I wrote almost in its entirety on that balcony. (“Killer Heart,” about a heatstroke.) Because it’s kind of hot, you know? So I was just pretending in my mind to be somewhere not in Mid-City. It’s the only story that is in New Orleans but not in Mid-City; it’s in the Irish Channel. I could visualize that. It was such a relief in mind to go somewhere. I’m sitting there in the pitch-freaking-black, and it stinks stinks stinks. As a carpenter I always had a miner’s lamp, because I always had to be inside cabinets. Just sitting out there, typing away or reading stories. I’d head out to the suburbs and download them, take them back home.

We essentially did the same thing we’d been doing. Two people submit their stories. You read them, you critique them. We went back and made a new schedule, started turning in stories. Just crazy to think about. People were sleeping under their mother’s dining room story with 18 other people. Nobody wrote about the storm. Nobody’s writing an evacuation story. It was great. It was fantastic. Because it was so the opposite of what was actually right downstairs.

I think my niece motivated me most of all. I was getting too old to do what I was doing. Carpentry I got into to put myself through school. I got into my own business on a leap of faith. This guy told me once, “I just pick up whatever I want to do with my time, and I make that a business.” I don’t know, that doesn’t seem like it would work. … All of a sudden I had a business making furniture, then I was a general contractor as well. It’s so physical and so hard, and I was so injured it was making me miserable. My knees, back, neck. Tennis elbow in both elbows. Rotator cuff. There was a certain part of each year spent in pain.

I did. What would I like? I’m not going to think about making a living at it. But I’ve always liked to write. I had no idea if I’m a good writer or a bad writer. I’d never written a short story, didn’t know how any of that worked. But I’d written. I thought, as soon as you make one small shift in any direction, everything else shifts. Then you start coming across things you wouldn’t have in the path of being a carpenter. It’s the same thing, but different. Would you like to be injured in new and improved ways?

All the characters survived. The story, in Guernica, called “Issue Is.” That was originally set here (at Napoleon House), and the name of it was “No Stupid Shoes.” It was something that people do as a writing exercise. Friend having ad-hoc summer workshop. He wanted to learn how to just do dialogue back-and-forth, and communicate characterization with gesture and all the things. I have no idea what I’m doing. None. One woman was trying to convince the other one to take ballroom dancing lessons, and the other one doesn’t want to. I’m going to workshop later tonight with people I graduated with. Somebody’s turned in three chapters of a novel. Several people are working on novels, me included. Mostly I’m working on getting my book launched right now.

The stories didn’t start out to be connected. Dooley was this other guy who kind of merged into this other character. I had to change the name so I’d stop thinking of him as this other guy. I have three brothers, so I have a little bit of insight. Things that I think are adorable, guys are like, “He would never have survived the playground.”

I was very surprised. People would point out the images. I don’t think like that: Here’s an image, or here’s a theme. I don’t even think of those as that. Now here’s the stuff I like to write. The rest of the stuff is just story to hang on that kind of moment. The other thing everybody says is, “It’s so violent! Somebody’s always getting mangled or dying, birds, pigs, dead babies.” That’s not violent. That’s just life.

“What Was Left” was probably the first story. And it was probably 40 pages long. That’s what I used to do: write 60 pages, cut back to 40. Get some feedback, then try to cut it back to a story, instead of a series of episodes. Adding subtlety to the character, adding grades of meaning. Refining the character. [Pudge] was sort of laughable, and that wasn’t what I was shooting for; I didn’t want people to laugh at him. That one started out with a line that’s not even in the story anymore. The thing that I thought about was a flashback in this guy’s life that I thought about when I was a kid. I was at a birthday party, and we’re all singing “Happy Birthday,” and this kid sneezes all over the cake. And I thought, what does that do to you? How do you grow up and remember that? I don’t know what she did; I don’t know how she managed that memory.

It kind of picks up where Luis’ story (leaves off), the very next day. There are going to be some new characters, but it will kind of revolve around all of them. St. Luis’ Palmyra. It’s just another question I had: How’s that kid going to grow up? As opposed to Pudge.

I started applying for fellowships and grants immediately after graduation. As an undergrad I had gotten a grant from the Astraea Foundation. I got a $1,500 grant. The Glimmer Train thing, I got when I was in (grad) school. That was my first national publication, for “Killer Heart.” Most bizarre was, I made myself apply for AROHO competition, which was the most elaborate application you’ve ever seen. There were six essays, maybe four or five lists: school, publications, awards. It was so intimidating. I would read other people’s writing and think, “Oh, well she’s brilliant.” I’m just a little schmo carpenter.

I got some other good advice: When you sign a two-book contract, the clock starts ticking right then. I didn’t think that would lead to my best work. So I signed a one-book contract. I don’t write in a straight line. And apparently nobody else does, either, but I always have the notion they do — sit down and go, “Page 1 …” I almost never start at the beginning of a story. It’s usually sort of auditory or visual. It’s some sense — not of what’s going to happen, but who’s in it, and what kinds of things would that person do.