As a novelist, I’m drawn to characters who are not famous, accomplished, or visible. And yet, two of the books I’ve written — one about F. Scott Fitzgerald and another about a serial killer who sells a story to Stephen King — are one or more of these things. So, I’m all over the place with my characters. But most often I write about people I know and those who are closest to me.

My brother John and I were raised in the Point Breeze section of Pittsburgh. Our father worked for Alcoa and taught, off and on, at Pitt, while our mother taught economics at Carnegie Mellon University. Both of my parents were “numbers” people, so I drifted in that direction. In school, I was always good at math.

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