India, Oct. 17 -- Earlier, you've noted that you "kind of ran out of life" having already leveraged your experiences in poetry and memoir.

I think, perhaps, more than having "run out of life", I felt at that time that I had run out of events, which necessitated the invention of events that lends itself to fiction. Inevitably, and positively, I think all literature carries the marks of its maker, whether that's in some power of observation or a particular viewpoint, even if the maker has to invent characters or plot lines in order to be themselves differently, or more fully. We have singular experiences, though not as many as we might think, since all experiences share common threads across people, but what is really singular about us is ...