Growing up, I felt so isolated from the rest of the world. It seemed every movie, every story took place in big cities I’d never live like New York or LA. Rarely was something big ever set in rural little towns with nothing but a plethora of churches, a handful of gas stations, and two caution lights like mine.

It’s my goal to set as many of my stories in Louisiana or base them around characters from my home state. Louisiana is difficult to pin down. She’s full of culture, but largely conservative which frustrates me. People joke you need a passport to visit and our road signs for entering the state offer a welcome in both English and French.

The characters I write and the settings I choose reflect the difficult feelings I had for my home state both growing up and even now as an adult. I love her, and yet she and I don’t always see eye to eye. That’s Louisiana. She’s complicated like that.