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THE IDEA FOR 'SWIMMERS IN THE SEA':

I was almost five when I lost my cousin and uncle in a car wreck. I was too young to fully understand what had happened, but the memories remained. The lives of my aunt and two cousins who survived that night were greatly affected. But when I was in the hospital with my mother, visiting my aunt, I heard a loud commotion from a room down the hall. There were two policemen guarding the door and I could hear the nurses trying to subdue the man in the room. I learned that he was the one who had been responsible for the wreck. He had been drunk and had run a stop sign. For some reason, his story was the one I wanted to tell. Specifically, I wanted to tell the story of the surviving son - the imagined son in the novel, Cliff, the shame that shaped him and the guilt he felt for being alive.

COMPLETING HIS FIRST BOOK AFTER A BRAIN ANEURYSM:

Prior to my brain surgery (for a hemorrhage), the novel had been sent out to large publishers by my agent . I came home to rejection letters. For about a year and a half I could not write at all. But I kept going back to the novel and, when I did, I felt that the structure was cumbersome. The damage was done to the right frontal lobe of my brain, which is the source of creativity and spontaneity. I was unable to write 'unconsciously', but the left side of my brain was just fine. So I suppose I used it to become an editor of my own manuscript.

WHY HE CHOSE NEW ORLEANS AS THE SETTING:

Much of New Orleans is below sea level. It was the underbelly of New Orleans that I wrote about. The have-nots. New Orleans grew out of an agrarian society and many of its problems originate from that. The wave has already fallen (a reference to the Matthew Arnold verse that inspired the title: 'For we are all swimmers in the sea, poised atop a huge wave of fate, uncertain as to which side it will fall'). Some people fell toward land and some fell toward water. The decay and hopelessness of the New Orleans I wrote about reinforced the fates of the characters.

THEMES HE WRITES ABOUT:

Fate, finding meaning in life, finding the space we live in between material and spiritual worlds. I write about people who have been dealt bad cards and find themselves having to do something about that. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they move from one misunderstanding to one that is more profound, but meaningful to the reader. In Hitchcock's films we saw the gun before the protagonist did. In my work, I try to give the reader credit for understanding my characters' flaws and emotional problems before the characters do.

WHY HE WRITES:

Writing is a hobby. Or, more accurately, an addiction. But I don't play poker with the guys; I don't fish; I don't hunt; I don't play tennis; I don't watch the NFL, the NBA or baseball. I really don't do much of anything except work (he owns a graphic design firm), spend time with my family and friends and write. I'm pretty boring. You don't want to invite me to your house for dinner.
I've felt the need to write for as long as I remember. I was always inspired by the books I read as a child. Once a week my mother would take my sisters and me to the library. It was an old library. I can still close my eyes and smell it -- the mildew, the floor wax, the dust. I can tell you that without my mother doing that, I would never have fallen in love with books.

WHAT'S NEXT?

I'm well into my second novel. My agent likes it. I was relieved when he said he did, because I conceived it and have written every bit of it following my brain surgery. The novel is different for me because it's told in first person, from the point of view of four characters. Two of those characters are women. If I'm lucky, I'll be around to play with grandkids one day. That would be very cool.

- Carla Kucinski Seward