Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don't think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.

I think the mythology of death really ran away with me when I was very young.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.

The NFL is a performance-based business, so you should have to perform to earn some of your money. At the same time, I realize that my success isn't just because of what I do out there.

Just because I was almost 62, I did not feel decrepit and felt I wasn't finished being a soldier yet.