SInce you are from New Orleans, and I lived there once upon a time, how much have your experiences growing up in the Crescent City shaped who you are as a person and a writer?

Cole McCade There was a point where I think the influence of growing up in New Orleans influenced my writing too much. My early efforts were made of voodoo blood and graveyard smoke, but they were too heavy and thick--all atmosphere, no substance, until it was hard to even figure out what was going on amid vaguely poetic and overly lush descriptions. (Yes, even lusher than my current writing--the way I write now is sparse by comparison.) I always felt like I was trying to capture New Orleans' black magic bourbon scent in my writing, and I was trying much too hard. I've left that behind, though I can't say it's wholly gone. Writers are always evolving, and even when we grow and change and shed the things that don't work, little bits of it cling. So I'll always have a little voodoo in my blood, and in my writing, but it's not a major factor.

As far as how it shaped me as a person...not really sure I can answer that, honestly, since I don't have another life experience of growing up somewhere else for contrast. It was what it was. It may have fostered a certain laissez faire attitude, and possibly fueled my understanding of race relations as a mixed-race person of many cultures who didn't fit into any one of the preset boxes that tend to be expected out of people in Louisiana. But as much as I have a deep and abiding love for the New Orleans of my memories, it's really hard to say that the city itself shaped me in any particular way that wasn't also affected by family, life events, and multiculturalism independent of location.

Though I do have a deeply breathless appreciation of the power of a hurricane, and I miss how it feels to stand outside during the eye of the storm.

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