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I get inspired in certain places. You have to write in places like Amsterdam or Paris or New Zealand, when you're standing on a yacht, looking out at the middle of the ocean.

I made my own fictional land, which is 'Bell Choir Coast.' It was a response to feeling really, really lost, and it was what I was looking for.

I have a variety of readers from across the diasporic community, not just from South Asia. I like to write large stories that include all of us - about common and cohesive experiences which bring together many immigrants, their culture shocks, transformations, concepts of home and self in a new land.

Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home.

I do mostly Southern landscapes. I do beautiful old barns that are falling down, and beautiful trees reflecting in the water. My lovely wife Dorothy and I travel quite a bit, so I take pictures of different things that inspire me to come home, when I come home here in North Carolina, into my art studio and paint these things.

I live by the sea, but the body of water I have the most feeling about is the Mississippi River, where I used to row and skate, ride on the ferry in childhood, watch the logs or just dream.

I go back to a very specific aspect of the Midwest - small towns surrounded by farmland. They make a good stage for what I like to write about, i.e., roads and houses, bridges and rivers and weather and woods, and people to whom strange or interesting things happen, causing problems they must overcome.

Seven of my novels take place in the Southwest, in the Four Corners area which has been my home since 1973. I know these mountains, rivers, mesas and canyons well, so it's been natural for me to draw on my own personal experiences here.

I'm surrounded by such beautiful, creative people, and I just love sort of sharing their stories and their journeys.