Today, Jim Chambers is interviewing Rodney Jones, author of The Sun, the Moon, and Maybe the Trains, scheduled to be released October 2nd.

Jim: Rodney, can you please tell us a bit about yourself? What’s your life all about when you’re not writing?

Rodney: I like to get outside and walk. I’ll drive out to the country, two miles from home, and walk along the corn and soybeans of rural Ohio. My mind dumps all the thoughts that I’d put on hold while writing. If I’m alone I’ll sometimes talk to myself—exercise my vocal cords. Sometimes this turns into a conversation—a dialogue. Perhaps once a week I get out my bicycle and ride up the Cardinal Greenway. I’ll ride thirty to forty miles, occasionally fifty. Often, these rides are shared with my daughter, Jody. We’ll talk for the first twenty miles, then grow tired and quiet for the remaining trip back. Lately, I’ve been getting the itch to spend time alone in the woods. There’s a certain hilltop in the Charles Deam Wilderness Area overlooking Lake Monroe, which I especially like to backpack to. What a beautiful area that is. I feel truly isolated out there.

I have a vegetable garden too, all organic, lots of tomatoes, which usually end up as marinara. Now and then I pitch baseballs to my grandson, Jory, or dance with my granddaughter, Emele. We do this thing we call ‘song for the day’ where I’ll play old records, which I have a nice collection of, and we’ll work out little dance routines. She loves it. So do I. I probably spend an hour a day on the phone with my girlfriend who lives four hundred miles away. We haven’t seen each other in twelve years, but I think, now that I have a few extra dollars for gas, I’ll go visit her. That should be a hoot. From time to time I do a little work. I earn money doing small carpentry jobs or stonework. I enjoy the work, but it tends to get in the way of my writing, so I avoid it as much as possible. I’m smiling, thinking of that line from the movie Office Space: “It’s not that I’m lazy; it’s just that I don’t care.”

And one more thing: I paint—oils—abstract. I was an artist long before I became a writer.

Jim: Who or what influenced your decision to become a writer?
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