Replacement Parts is a collection of short stories featuring a cast of characters struggling with personal demons and societal expectations in small-town America. What was the inspiration for your collection?

This book was so many years in the making, it’s difficult to say the direct inspiration. Part of it is pulled from stories I hear from people around me. Veterans told me their war stories, inspiring a piece in the collection. My neighbor is a police officer and told me details about his night shifts. Friends and students who worked in group homes for troubled kids told me some horrific, as well as funny, tales. Each turned into a story in the book.

Also, part of it was from when I taught in a small town where the main source of employment, a factory, was shut down, affecting the community, which became the inspiration for the town of Dexton in the book.

Another was the fact that I published each story independently, threw them into a manuscript, and a writer friend noticed the stories had similar characters and plot points. So, instead of feeling like a one-trick pony, there was potential for a linked collection following a novelistic arc between the characters over several years/generations.

Then there’s just living in Iowa, with its turbulent weather—floods and droughts, blizzards and tornados—and endless landscape, as well as it’s working class roots, that informed the backdrop of every sentence.

Do you have a favorite story in Replacement Parts? One whose characters especially resonate with you

That’s a tough one—but I’d have to say my favorite story is Birmingham House, the third story in the collection. It takes place in a teenage group home and is told in 10 scenes, each narrated by a different character—each with a distraught past so that every vignette moves to a quick climax. Some characters established earlier in the book reappear in the home. Others are introduced for the first time, only to arrive again later in the collection. The setting really spoke to me: these stories of kids with traumatic backgrounds, all struggling and acting out, which on the surface makes them look like ‘bad’ kids. So finding the heart and humanity behind these facades was an inspiring experience.

As for characters, I love Geoff, a young boy who appears late in the collection and befriends a new girl suffering from cancer. I admire his innocence and big heart. But my favorite character is probably Hannah—she was the first character I framed the collection around—she’s tough and funny and vulnerable, so I let her guide the book by kicking it off in the first story, reappearing several times throughout, and finally ending the book.

I find that authors sometimes ask themselves questions and let their characters answer them. Do you think this is true for your characters?

It’s true, as I write I have no answers, just questions as I discover things—but I don’t know if there’s ever any answers either. In fact, when I feel a story is close to offering a moral, advice, an answer to a big question, I often veer away from this impulse in order to open up more questions by the end—so hopefully the reader will walk away pondering the story, wrestling with it, as opposed to feeling one way about it.

Also, by doing this, you can explore the complexity behind people. For instance, Carl is a character who appears several times throughout the book—and may be the most unlikable character. So, he was fun to write, and it gave me the responsibility to find his humanity—try to understand why he does certain things most would find ugly.

Same with Geoff, who is maybe the most likeable character—how can his innocence be a problem? He’s a ‘good kid’, but he makes mistakes, refuses to stand up for a friend—and how often do we all fall into that fear?

So some easy answers I want to complicate. And some questionable characters will hopefully become easier to identify with by the end.

Can fans look forward to more fiction works from you soon? What are you currently working on?

Short stories are my passion. But I’m trying some new things—at least for me—when it comes to style, structure, and adding more humor my writing.

And I’m working on a novel based on three points of view, based on a family suffering loss. Plus, there’s comic book museums, and conservative Christian high schools, and new-age retreats, and road trips, and Ouija board séances, and….in other words, it’s a bit of a crazy mess right now—but also a fun work in progress.

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