Greetings, Mr. MacGregor. Do you prefer "John" or "Mac?"

Well, most folks call me John, but lately I've getting more of Mac, so Mac will fly.

I must say I enjoyed reading your book. It was not exactly what I expected, but that can be a good thing. Your publisher says the book is "rather cryptic." The traditional Western that I am used to is very black-and-white. Can you tell us why you decided to go with a more you-have-to-read-between-the-lines approach?

The form seemed to fit the subject matter.  Tad's main problem, narratively speaking, is that different groups of folks have differing opinions of who he is, and he battles against that his whole life.  I thought it was important to tell the story in a way that brought the reader into that.  That is, rather than nail down what the right "story" is about Tad with an omniscient third-person narrative, to put concrete bounds around what each of the narratives knows about the truth.  Then the ball is in the reader's court to decide what Tad was really up to, and why.  The reader ends up with a new, personal version of who Tad is.

It's important to know that this is not borne of some kind of "there's no real morality" mode of thinking.  I'm not cut from that herd.  I live in a very black-and-white moral universe, and Tad does too.  But knowing that there is a truth is not the same thing as knowing the truth...