Asked to write some information about how I came to write my novel, I must be very frank about three things. Two years ago, my friend and the Editor of Wild Leaf Press, Bill Hunter, gave me some advice about writing a novel. Bill said that what sells today in America is sex, death, and violence. Monday Afternoon has plenty of the first two ingredients without being pornographic and morbid. I am the eternal English teacher who can’t resist a literary allusion or two and the flourishing sentence.

Secondly, the adultery of the main character is the author’s wish fulfillment. Since for a numbers of reasons I have not sinned in the flesh, I decided to sin in this book. In my younger days I spent a lot of time at the Stamford Nature Center in Connecticut; hence, this is where Angelo meets Monica. It’s a lot more convenient to cheat on one’s wife in fiction rather than in the flesh. I’d recommend it to all husbands when the thrill with marriage deliquesces. It is the difference between the menu and the meal; the menu is safer, akin to Shakespeare’s exploration of murder in his plays, such as Othello and Hamlet, in lieu of actual murder. A lot less messy I should think.