SR: Oh yeah, it’s a very thin line. A huge influence on me has been the Twilight Zone, and I think The Simpsons has shown, with their Halloween episodes, that there’s almost no line between horror and comedy. Regardless of genre, my favorite writers are the ones who give you a strong hooky premise. For me, that’s what I’m aspiring to do every time I sit down and write. What’s a way I can hook the reader and make them keep reading until I can hook them again?

CD: You once said that your favorite perspective to write from is “any perspective where someone is missing some vital piece of information — preferably a piece of information so vital that it will probably result in their death.” Does that still ring true?

SR: Oh yeah. I mean, look, that’s my only gimmick. I’m not going to abandon it unless I come up with another one.

The other thing, as a writer, at least for me, is I’m always trying to raise the stakes as much as possible. Because that’s a cheap way to make the story more interesting. Like, I could have written a novel about two people who needed to kiss otherwise they…won’t…date? But instead I decided to write a novel about two people who need to kiss and if they don’t the world will explode. For me, that’s just more interesting.

CD: What’s the life cycle of one of your ideas or sketches? In What in God’s Name I saw elements from your earlier work come back, for example, God’s prophet being forced by God to dress as a crazy person, which you wrote about in Ant Farm.

SR: Good eye! Wow, I can’t believe you caught that. 

The process changes from book to book, but the character of God I’ve been writing about for a long, long time, since even before Ant Farm. I’ve been writing pieces about an out-to-lunch, clueless sort of god, for years and years and years. So What in God’s Name was a chance to give him his own book. That’s why I was initially excited to write this book. Because I love this character and I wanted to write about him for an extended length of time.