Bad high school English classes have given too many readers the idea that "theme" in literature is a ponderous concept, the sole province of Great Literature, something writers decide on before they write the first word of a novel. In truth, I think most stories, highbrow or otherwise, have a theme of some sort, and it's seldom a preconceived thing. It grows out of the story and the characters, and I believe few writers know what the themes of their novels are until the novels are finished, or at least well underway. Sometimes it doesn't become evident until years after you've written the damn thing.

In On Writing, Stephen King writes:

I don't believe any novelist, even one who's written forty-plus books, has too many thematic concerns; I have many interests, but only a few that are deep enough to power novels.

Of course I got to thinking about what my own "thematic concerns" might be, and I came up with a few I believe have run through my work over the years, regardless of how radically some readers may feel it has changed:

- The search for and creation of alternate families by characters whose biological families have rejected them (Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, The Value of X)

- The way the gay community sometimes victimizes itself almost as effectively as it is victimized by the religious right and its other obvious enemies (Exquisite Corpse, The Lazarus Heart, [to a lesser degree] Prime)

- How doing the work you truly want to do can power your life and fulfill your dreams (Liquor, D*U*C*K)

- How the everyday people of New Orleans, even more than the celebrities, the architecture, the food, the music, the spooky glamour, or any of the other things we're best known for, make it the unique place it is (Liquor, Prime, Soul Kitchen)

I don't know if this is of great interest to anybody, but I don't have much to say about my work these days (what work, ha-ha?), so I thought I'd share.