Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tzuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

When I first met my guest, Jess Walter, it was only around six or seven months ago, He'd written a novel called Beautiful Ruins.

Now he has a book of short stories, and I can't believe that the same person wrote both

of these books.

He looks the same to me, but he's a double guy.

One of his eyes is blue and one is black.

And he tells me that he was born with blonde hair, but you'd never guess it.

His hair is brown with a little bit of salt and pepper entering it.

Do you change skins from book to book?

Maybe I do. I think writers should. I mean, I was feel like the story tells you what it wants to be

and beyond even your, you know, your own ideas as a writer. Now, that book, Beautiful Ruins,

was like a romantic fantasy. It began at the set of the classic fiasco Cleopatra, followed a man who loved the starlet who'd

been thrown off stage to contemporary Hollywood.

It was very wise and nervy about contemporary pitching and the kind of development people we have.

This book, We Live in Water, a book of short stories, livers in and around Spokane, Washington,

and down in the tooth, unemployed, depressed, lost. which set of characters is invented?

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