Kirman: It's been six years since your last novel. Why the long break?
Gilmour: It took me six years because when I finished the last book, An Affair with the Moon [Random House, 1993], I didn't like it, I didn't think it worked. When I read the galleys for it I thought "oh, I am screwed, I am really screwed." It was an example of writing a book that didn't need to be written. It was just that I enjoyed all the popularity that my second novel, How Boys See Girls [Random House, 1991], got. I wanted more parties and more pats on the head, so I kind of blasted this book out. It came out and I didn't like it, it didn't do well. No one else liked it either and that was fine, they shouldn't have. So I thought I would take my time with this book and I waited a couple of years to start it. I wrote it for three years and I sold it. Then a month after I sold it I read it again and I thought "This is a piece of shit; this is no good at all. Everyone is going to know that I am just a kind of sex obsessed old guy in a really unattractive way." I had a terrible romantic breakup with someone and I think I was trying to solve my terrible sexual jealousy about her on the page and it gave the book a really clammy, creepy feel.