Larry Benjamin. Wordsmith. Writer. Author.

This week I’m chatting with the remarkable Mark William Lindberg, a queer author, artist, performer, and educator, whose new novella, Queer on a Bench just came out. Let’s just dive write in, shall we?   As a writer, I am always interested in other writers' writing process and what inspires them, so can you talk a little about what inspires your stories and what your writing process is like? I'm really interested in form, so a lot of the time—certainly with my two books so far—I'll start with a what-if question. 81 Nightmares came from asking myself, "What if all you had was one character's dreams? What if that was the whole story? What could you learn about that person? What would you think you knew about them? Is it possible to tell a complete story that lives only in a character's dream life?" My new book, Queer on a Bench , began with the question, "What if the whole story has to happen between the time a character sits down on a bench an...