DHW: Tell us about your latest book, All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky.

JRL: It takes place during the Great Depression, and begins in the Dust Bowl part of Oklahoma. It starts out with a young man, Jack Catcher, who has lost both his parents and is convinced to steal a dead man’s car and head for East Texas. The person who convinces him is Jane, who has her little brother in tow. Jane has big dreams and a big mouth, something that both causes them problems and serves them well. The novel has hobos and gangsters, the troubles of the road, and I like to think it’s pretty exciting, as well as informative about those times. It’s all bigger than life, as it’s seen through the eyes of kid who is discovering life. It is in many ways as much Jane’s story as it is Jacks’s.

DHW: All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky is a YA novel – the first that you’ve written. Did you venture into YA territory for a particular reason, and did you enjoy the experience? Will you do it again?

JRL: Actually, I had a YA published years ago, The Boar. It’s one of my favorite books. It was published ten years after it was written. I tried to become a YA writer in the eighties, but just couldn’t break in. I also tried a lot of different avenues. The YA novel allowed me to be me more than some of the other stuff I was writing at the time. It convinced me to just write a story and let it take me where it goes. I prefer this approach, and I plan to write others. In fact, I’m contracted for two more.

DHW: As your writing career clearly demonstrates, you have a dynamic penchant for genre fiction. Why?

JRL: I grew up on it and it always moved me. I love literary fiction as well. It’s like anything else, both branches have the good and the bad, and the truth is, when genre fiction is at its best, it is literary fiction. The best literary fiction to me has a story. I like experimental fiction, all manner of things, but I always come back to story. You can pack a lot of truth and literary tropes into genre fiction. In fact, both fiction types are just that – types. One isn’t necessarily better than the other.

DHW: Despite the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of its execution, genre-blending is typically accompanied by low book sales. You’re an exception to the rule. You blend genres with hard-nosed enthusiasm yet maintain a large readership; the fans of yours I know are truly fanatic about your writing. Why is genre-blending so taboo? And how do you do it so successfully?

JRL: I do it because it’s what I do naturally. In my case, that’s what worked for me, and I think it’s because I do it without planning it, or thinking about it that much. When I’m asked to do a short story for a specific kind of anthology, I tuck the basic idea in my head, but after that, I just let it run. As to why I’ve been successful with it, I can’t say for sure. But I am sincere when I’m doing it and don’t see it as a gimmick; that way the blend is more natural.

DHW: There are, of course, a number of elements that make for good fiction – in and of themselves, and in terms of how they intersect and form the collective body of a narrative. If you had to foreground one narrative element, however, what would it be?

JRL: Sincerity. Write from passion, not obsession. One runs your life, the other activates your life. I don’t want to be that guy who spends seven days a week all day writing. They don’t love what they do anymore than I do, but I also have a life. I have other passions. I have a family. I’ve studied and taught martial arts for fifty years as of next year. I travel. I get involved in a lot of differet things. So many different things. I think it makes the writing better.

DHW: You’ve been writing for a long time – prolifically. What got you writing in the first place, and why – other than making a living – do you still do it?

JRL: I do it for the same reason I always did it. I’m in love with it. I became excited about writing through comics, as a kid, and I’ve been writing since I was a kid.