Houghton Mifflin Q&A Q) Your previous works and your upcoming novel were written for adults. What made you decide to write for children? A) I have two children, the oldest of whom is nearly nineteen, so I've been reading books for children for a long time. I'd never really thought to write one until after spending months trying to make the story of Orville fit into another book I was writing, one for adults. I'd revised the story ten times before I realized I couldn't make it work. Then one day I picked up one of the revisions and saw that it would make a wonderful picture book, and the first time I revised it in that direction, it all came together. I guess this is, in part, more evidence that books have to be who they are, rather than who we might want them to be. Q) Did something in particular inspire Orville: A Dog Story? Did you draw the characters, human and animal, from people and/or pets you've known personally, as you did in your first, autobiographical work? A) Orville is actually a portrait of a dog my sister saved many years ago, named Conan. He looked like a cross between a mastiff and a Great Dane, if you can imagine the ugliest combination of those two dogs ever seen in nature. That part is autobiographical, as is the part about the dog falling in love with a woman across the road (this is the element that interested me most of all). Unfortunately, Conan's story didn't have a happy ending. Since I wrote the book, though, I was able to change history and give him the ending he deserved. Q) Did you read a lot as a child? Who or what were your favorite children's authors or books while you were growing up? A) I didn't read a lot as a child. I know this isn't something most writers would admit to, and I've heard some authors in interviews say they read the whole of Homer by the age of six, or were speaking Latin by three, or something outrageous. I loved books, certainly, but I was much too busy outside to read. Readers of Zippy [Kimmel's first book, the memoir A Girl Named Zippy] will recall that I had a lot of very important things to do on my bicycle and in regards to injured woodpeckers. I couldn't just be hanging around indoors all the time. My whole attitude to reading was changed by Charlotte's Web, which was by far my favorite book as a child and remains one of my favorites today. I love all of E.B. White's books and stories, both for children and adults. Q) On a related note, which writers for adults have most influenced your own style? A) While I don't think my style reflects it, I was greatly influenced by Joseph Mitchell, who wrote for the New Yorker for many years. Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of his essays and four of his books, is a book I turn to again and again when I've forgotten the secret of good prose. As a teenager my favorite writers were Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. I still love them both, and would list among my other favorites John Crowley, Alice Munro, Don DeLillo, Richard Russo, Margaret Drabble, Anne Tyler, Lee Smith, Lewis Nordan, John Kennedy Toole, and Augusten Burroughs. Q) You grew up attending a Quaker church; are you still a Quaker? In what ways has your religious background shaped your writing? A) I am still a Quaker and would never belong to any other sect or denomination; for me it's them or no one. One of the ways I've been shaped by that heritage is a profound distrust for any authority other than the Truth. This caused me to be a wretched student in elementary and high school, and obviously I'd be an abysmal soldier. But it taught me to sit still and listen for a trustworthy voice in my own head and heart, and that has served me well as a writer. Q) What are your writing habits like? Do you like to keep to a schedule, or do you write only when inspiration strikes? A) I work diligently — sometimes fourteen hours a day — when a project is fully under way. During those times when I'm not working on a book, I don't make myself sit down at the computer. I prefer to spend that time reading or cooking or hiking with the dogs. I find that I have to spend a certain amount of time putting stuff in the old creative cauldron before any good writing can come out. Q) The world knows a lot about you as a child, but less about you as an adult. What do you like to do for fun? What are your personal interests and hobbies? A) I have five dogs, so I'd have to count vacuuming as one of my hobbies. I love to go with my family to the ballpark and watch the Durham Bulls play baseball; I love the North Carolina beaches. (Those are both summer activities, I realize, so I think in the winter all I do is read and write. That's what it sounds like, anyway. Oh, and vacuum.) I travel back to Indiana a few times a year to spend time with friends and family there, and that always makes me happy. Q) What would you most like readers to take away from Orville: A Dog Story when they encounter the book? A) I think I'd like readers to take away from the book what Orville realizes in the end: there are so many ways to slip free of a chain. While what bound him was tangible and terrible, it was no less an impediment than the loneliness of the woman across the road, or the grief in the heart of Maybelle. Love freed them all, to a certain extent, and I hope that might be true for all of us.

Houghton Mifflin Q&A

Q) Your previous works and your upcoming novel were written for adults. What made you decide to write for children?

A) I have two children, the oldest of whom is nearly nineteen, so I've been reading books for children for a long time. I'd never really thought to write one until after spending months trying to make the story of Orville fit into another book I was writing, one for adults. I'd revised the story ten times before I realized I couldn't make it work. Then one day I picked up one of the revisions and saw that it would make a wonderful picture book, and the first time I revised it in that direction, it all came together. I guess this is, in part, more evidence that books have to be who they are, rather than who we might want them to be.

Q) Did something in particular inspire Orville: A Dog Story? Did you draw the characters, human and animal, from people and/or pets you've known personally, as you did in your first, autobiographical work?

A) Orville is actually a portrait of a dog my sister saved many years ago, named Conan. He looked like a cross between a mastiff and a Great Dane, if you can imagine the ugliest combination of those two dogs ever seen in nature. That part is autobiographical, as is the part about the dog falling in love with a woman across the road (this is the element that interested me most of all). Unfortunately, Conan's story didn't have a happy ending. Since I wrote the book, though, I was able to change history and give him the ending he deserved.

Q) Did you read a lot as a child? Who or what were your favorite children's authors or books while you were growing up?

A) I didn't read a lot as a child. I know this isn't something most writers would admit to, and I've heard some authors in interviews say they read the whole of Homer by the age of six, or were speaking Latin by three, or something outrageous. I loved books, certainly, but I was much too busy outside to read. Readers of Zippy [Kimmel's first book, the memoir A Girl Named Zippy] will recall that I had a lot of very important things to do on my bicycle and in regards to injured woodpeckers. I couldn't just be hanging around indoors all the time. My whole attitude to reading was changed by Charlotte's Web, which was by far my favorite book as a child and remains one of my favorites today. I love all of E.B. White's books and stories, both for children and adults.

Q) On a related note, which writers for adults have most influenced your own style?

A) While I don't think my style reflects it, I was greatly influenced by Joseph Mitchell, who wrote for the New Yorker for many years. Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of his essays and four of his books, is a book I turn to again and again when I've forgotten the secret of good prose. As a teenager my favorite writers were Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut. I still love them both, and would list among my other favorites John Crowley, Alice Munro, Don DeLillo, Richard Russo, Margaret Drabble, Anne Tyler, Lee Smith, Lewis Nordan, John Kennedy Toole, and Augusten Burroughs.

Q) You grew up attending a Quaker church; are you still a Quaker? In what ways has your religious background shaped your writing?

A) I am still a Quaker and would never belong to any other sect or denomination; for me it's them or no one. One of the ways I've been shaped by that heritage is a profound distrust for any authority other than the Truth. This caused me to be a wretched student in elementary and high school, and obviously I'd be an abysmal soldier. But it taught me to sit still and listen for a trustworthy voice in my own head and heart, and that has served me well as a writer.

Q) What are your writing habits like? Do you like to keep to a schedule, or do you write only when inspiration strikes?

A) I work diligently — sometimes fourteen hours a day — when a project is fully under way. During those times when I'm not working on a book, I don't make myself sit down at the computer. I prefer to spend that time reading or cooking or hiking with the dogs. I find that I have to spend a certain amount of time putting stuff in the old creative cauldron before any good writing can come out.

Q) The world knows a lot about you as a child, but less about you as an adult. What do you like to do for fun? What are your personal interests and hobbies?

A) I have five dogs, so I'd have to count vacuuming as one of my hobbies. I love to go with my family to the ballpark and watch the Durham Bulls play baseball; I love the North Carolina beaches. (Those are both summer activities, I realize, so I think in the winter all I do is read and write. That's what it sounds like, anyway. Oh, and vacuum.) I travel back to Indiana a few times a year to spend time with friends and family there, and that always makes me happy.

Q) What would you most like readers to take away from Orville: A Dog Story when they encounter the book?

A) I think I'd like readers to take away from the book what Orville realizes in the end: there are so many ways to slip free of a chain. While what bound him was tangible and terrible, it was no less an impediment than the loneliness of the woman across the road, or the grief in the heart of Maybelle. Love freed them all, to a certain extent, and I hope that might be true for all of us.

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