You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

“I write stories with a certain rawness that tends to make polite people uncomfortable—and after years as a miscreant, I’ve learned the quickest way to shock someone is simply to tell the truth.”

Whenever I buy a book, I read the first paragraph first. If it sucks, the book goes back on the shelf. Life has already handed me enough bad decisions—I don’t need to buy one.

I write stories with a certain rawness that tends to make polite people uncomfortable—and after years as a miscreant, I’ve learned the quickest way to shock someone is simply to tell the truth. It’s a strange thing to discover about yourself, especially after spending a good portion of your life trying not to look too closely at it. Most people prefer their stories polished, softened around the edges, trimmed so no one bleeds on the carpet. I was never very good at that. Somewhere between bad decisions, hard lessons, and the quiet moments that come after both—usually with a single malt scotch in hand and a smoke, preferably a straight, because there ain’t no sense in fucking around—I learned that the truth has a habit of sitting in the room whether you invite it or not… that motherfucker. All a writer really does is point at it and say, “There it is,” while everyone else pretends they don’t see the blood on the floor. Be careful not to slip.