BOUNCE is my most autobiographical novel, though the protagonist is a female

Q: I read your novel BOUNCE two years ago and it was great, I could not put it down. I thought you were a romance writer and read your story in Brown Sugar about the girl who fell in love with her brother-in-law. I wasn't sure I would like the gambling book because I do not know much about gambling and that world, but it is a great book, I am almost finished with it. The two books are different, but the style is the same. The gambling book has me turning pages like the romance book BOUNCE did. I really like your style and I want to know how you do it. What is your secret to making the characters in your book interesting?

A: Thank you. I am glad you mentioned BOUNCE and ALL OR NOTHING because those are two books that still astonish me when I read them. I am turning pages, saying to myself, "I wrote this? I wrote this? When? I don't remember writing this." I am very conscious of the other things that I have written. I can recall pretty much what I was thinking when I designed this chapter or the other, this character, this scene, chose this word. With BOUNCE and ALL OR NOTHING, there are times when it's almost like someone else wrote it. Those are two novels that I can just sit down and read and enjoy like a fan, though I am the author.

ALL OR NOTHING, of course, is about a character that I know well, a gambler, so I can turn off my brain and channel what I know about that world and cruise through the details, writing in a dreamlike state. I am a gambler, P is a gambler, the rest is easy.

BOUNCE is similar. I can't really explain it, but BOUNCE is the most autobiographical novel I have ever published . . . even though the protagonist is female.

Once upon a time, I was Cindique. I was a girl, er, boy, trapped in an abusive situation. My heart was elsewhere, but those roads were blocked to me too, only I was too young to recognize the CLOSED ROAD signs posted along the way. I had to live through the pain, the illusion of love that was really more abuse, but masked. I had to live through the pain. It was the only path that allowed growth for me. For Cindique.

So I closed my eyes and wrote, I became Cindique, I closed my eyes and wrote in a dreamlike state.

Thanks,

Preston