At the beginning of your most recent work, the novella The Ballad of Black Tom, you write: “People who move to New York always make the same mistake. They can’t see the place.” What does it mean to you to “see” the place you live in?

I mean that a person has to try and understand what they’re expecting, what they’re hoping for, what they fear about any new locale. These personal concerns tend to create the reality we then encounter. All of us are living in a personal virtual reality machine, the brain. Obviously we can’t discard the damn thing (and who would want to?) but it behooves each of us to realize how much we are shaping what we see. This plays into that novella in a vital way. Where one person might see a monster, another will see a human being. And both might be true. Click here to continue reading…