The main character, Mac, is based on a real person — a guy my dad knew well in my hometown of Lincoln, NE. He was one of those characters who make you reconsider your sense that people in small towns on the plains haven’t seen a lot of life. You think that, but then you meet somebody like Mac, you realize, My God, there are subterranean universes of feeling here.

Most of my work is involved in trying to get a handle on this confounding dynamic – the staid and superficial aspect of small-town life vs. the rich and churning.

Well, it’s not fiction, but I recently read and enjoyed a collection of essays on the life and work of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. As with the character of Rolf in MacFarland, I see phenomenally rich possibilities for fiction in the raw material of diplomacy and international affairs (or whatever you want to call it).

As a former diplomat myself, I can vouch for the authentically captivating textures of international affairs – both the glamor of presidential palaces and Ambassadors’ cocktail parties (the clichés are true, it is kinda glamorous at times) and the tedium, pettiness and absurdity of bureaucratic culture. It’s a tremendously… what? A tremendously fecund admixture.”

Retire to Stockholm. Or the Canadian Rockies, I can’t decide which. 

Mostly I watch sports on TV. I’m as fascinated with the stories of sport as I am with stories of diplomacy.

I tried amateur dog-training for a while, but I wasn’t very good at it. 

Yes, but I can’t tell you about them, or else I’d have to kill you. Kidding. I’m kidding.

Mostly.

Nap. Multiple times per day if at all possible.

Eat junk food. I’ve been eating too much of it lately.

So these two hunters are walking in the woods and come upon a hole in the ground. They can’t tell how deep it is, so they decide to throw something down and see how long it takes to hit bottom. They look around and find this big, rusty, junky old anvil; they shove it to the hold and over the edge. They listen, but don’t hear anything.

“Man, must be deep,” one of them says.

A moment later, a goat comes tearing past them and over the edge into the hole.

“What the hell was that?!” the other one says.

Next they hear somebody calling out a name over and over as if searching for someone. They come upon an old farmer.

“You two seen a goat around here?” the famer asks.

“Yes!” they say. “He just went screaming past us and jumped into that hole!”

The famer looks confused. “That’s impossible,” he says. “I had him chained to an anvil.”

This was fun!