1.) When I was four years old, I escaped Vietnam by boat with my mother and my seven-year-old sister. We were at sea-90 people in a boat made for 20-for six days before safely making it to Malaysia, where we lived on the refugee island of Pulau Bidong for four months before my father sponsored us from the US. The character of Suzy in the novel experienced a similar journey, except hers was not as safe, either on the boat or on the island.

2.) I lived in Las Vegas for seven years, where I started playing poker to distract myself from the disappointment of my first book not getting published. I became obsessed with the game, playing online and at casinos as well as a weekly game I held at my apartment for four years. I also ended up with a novel.

3.) While I was writing Dragonfish, I had a number of books on my desk which I would read random pages from for inspiration, among them: Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.

4.) I've wanted to be a writer since I was six years old, when I first started writing short stories in our reading class. I've never wanted to be anything else, except perhaps a second-baseman for the Chicago Cubs. I'm not big on celebrities, but there are two people who would make me choke up if I met them: Alice Munro and Ryne Sandberg.

5.) I had never written crime fiction until I was asked to contribute a short story to the anthology, Las Vegas Noir, in 2008. That story was called "This Or Any Desert" and is now the second chapter of Dragonfish. In fact, This Or Any Desert was the title of the novel until the editing stage, when my American editor suggested we replace it with Dragonfish.

6.) Throughout college and into my first year at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, I tried very terribly to be William Faulkner, who in many ways is still my literary hero. Of his work, my favorite short story is "Carcassonne," and my favorite novel is Light in August (though I really want to say Absalom, Absalom!, despite my understanding only 25% of it).

7.) If you give me an hour, I could make a pretty good argument that Hamlet is the greatest work of literature ever written.

8.) One of these days, I'd like to write a novel that makes me think and feel the way Hitchcock's Vertigo does.

9.) The book from my youth that has most influenced me is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I've always been obsessed with the idea of stepping into an alien world, as if through some secret, magical door. Only recently did I realize that this surely has something to do with me being an immigrant.

10.) When I write, I try to evoke a consistent tone more than anything, and the tone I find myself always reaching for is something like the movies of Wong Kar-Wai, or Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, or the music of Beach House, my favorite contemporary band.