David Marchese

And as a gag, the

I assigned her and some other junior people to try and get authors to write, like, jokey inscriptions on their books.

And she, to her credit, couldn't bring herself to do it, so got me to do it.

And I came up to you, and I asked you— I can tell you what it said.

I felt so bad about it.

And at one point you looked at me and you said, is this real?

And I just lied to your face.

It honestly pops into my head as something I feel bad about.

It was fake, yes.

All right, so now I can move forward with a clean conscience.

Okay, so your new novel, Vigil, it raised a lot of questions for me, thematic questions.

including questions about determinism, about how much anyone is sort of responsible for their own life or the decisions that they make in their life.

And I'm just curious to know your answer to that question.

You said there are sort of characters who represent two sides of that question.

Just for people who will not have yet read the book, can you explain those two characters?

When I read the book, I was, I think, more in line with the Frenchman.

I really was hungry for K.J.

Boone, who's sort of an unrepentant oil magnate.

I wanted him to get some sort of judgment to be rendered on him.

And I just wonder how you think about the subject of judgment for the real-world analogs of someone like a K.J.