So that was a kind of wake-up call for me.
I was just like, Ive got to write about this.
I didnt understand America or that part of America.
Credit: Jerry Bauer / Opale / Retna
What kind of research did you do?
I only went to church a couple times.
Which, again, really helped me in terms of details.
The ongoing research throughout was, I would start almost every day with a little Bible reading.
Then Id go and search Christian websites.
The inevitability of failure is built right into the religion, the way they talk about it.
LikeLittle Children,The Abstinence Teachertakes place in an unnamed suburb.
Which isnt to say that there arent parents and children in cities or on farms.
I just dont know them.
[Laughs] Also, I grew up in suburbia.
In Garwood, New Jersey, right?Mmm-hmm.
It was white working-class, mostly.
It was a factory town, and now the factories are all gone.
They were all along the railroad tracks and now theyre just one big strip mall.
Outback Steakhouse smells better than the perforating company!
There was actually a [newspaper] headline: Garwood smells better and can prove it!
[Laughs] We loved that.
It was a strange town.
You would just go around like [sniffs],Mmmm!
The football team was the Bears, and the literary magazine wasPariah.
It was definitely a real sub-culture.
But I wrote stories for them.
I was also known as Frodo because I was an early adopter ofThe Lord of the Rings.
NEXT PAGE: I got $5,000 for writing that teen horror novel.
When my first book got published, I got zero.
