Toby Barlow is a writer and a creative director living in downtown Detroit, Michigan. Toby was born in the year of the horse, his birthstone is amethyst, and he is an Aquarius, which is a water bearing sign. His house plants often spend their time wishing he would bear some water over in their general direction. But sometimes he forgets to. And so then they die. Sharp Teeth is his first book.

Mark Thwaite: What first gave you the idea for writing Sharp Teeth?

Toby Barlow: I was stuck in a Chicago hotel room for a long, long time, months actually. And I got pretty stir crazy and tired of watching Law & Order re-runs so I was just reading anything I could lay my hands on. I came across a great article in The Chicago Reader, a portrait of the day in the life of a dogcatcher. In it he described the dog pack's social organization. Basically, it's a single alpha dog, a single bitch, and a lot of male dogs surrounding her. That seemed like a very interesting social structure and, for some reason, I thought to myself "If that was a pack of werewolves, and if the bitch fell in love with that dogcatcher, well, that would be interesting."

MT: How long did it take you to write your book Toby?

TB: It took a couple of years. The day job got in the way a lot. Also, I liked to step away for a week or two every so often and just let the characters roam round in my head. They had to find their own way.

MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?

TB: I write directly onto the computer, but I write down notes on anything as the ideas come to me and stuff them in my pockets as I go through the day. I edited and reworked things a lot as I went. Going back an working on earlier passages is a great way to use time when you don't feel up to pushing deeper into the book.

MT: Sharp Teeth is a novel-in-verse with monsters -- was Beowulf in your mind somewhere!?

TB: I like Beowulf and love John Gardner's Grendel, but neither was really on my mind when I was working on this. James Ellroy, Ross MacDonald, and Raymond Chandler were much more present. Also Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red was a huge influence.

MT: You are an Executive Director at the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, a novel-in-verse seems like it might be a hard sell: did the day-job skills help get it published!?

TB: The day job skills didn't help in getting it published, that was just blind luck, but I put a lot of effort into promoting it. I did everything and anything I could think of, from printing business cards and postcards for it to making an intricate website (sharpteeththebook.com) I felt I had to make the extra effort because the book itself was sort of an anti-marketing effort in that I was creating something that was pretty far away from the mainstream. I'm not sure all the effort paid off, people are either willing to take the chance on something a little different or they're not. In the end, the reviews are probably the only thing that make any difference, luckily mine were solid.

I've been sort of amused at the flack a few bloggers and reviewers have given me for working in advertising, some see it as an enormous strike against me. But if you look at all the writers who have come out of copywriting, Salman Rushdie, Don Delillo, Joseph Heller, even William Burroughs did a little time in the trenches, you find that it's been a good source for interesting literature. Maybe as only something to push off against. I also find working is a great source of food.

MT: What did writing in verse offer you that you felt you couldn't achieve writing in prose?

TB: I wanted to make something that felt very immediate. The verse, which isn't really poetry but is more like a graphic novel without pictures, was a way to do something dense and rich that didn't bog the reader down. The style also gave me a bit of extra dexterity, people are more forgiving with verse, they tend to think "Oh you were there and now you're way over here, okay" whereas in prose you've got to drag them there step by step. In a sense, it's a more liquid form of writing.

MT: What was the most difficult aspect of writing your book Toby? How did you overcome it?

TB: Writing your first novel and having it be a novel in verse is a pretty sketchy affair. I kept thinking I was simply mad. Nobody was going to publish the thing, so why the hell was I writing it? I had to convince myself it was worth the time I was putting into it. Luckily, everything on television pretty much blows, so hanging out with my characters felt like a reasonable way to pass the time.

MT: Obama or McCain!?

TB: Are you asking which one is a werewolf or which one I support? Democrats are better pack animals than Republicans, they work to the collective good in a more responsible manner. Republicans are a much darker kind of beast. I think Bush kind of proved that.

MT: Do you read the critics? Have you been pleased with the responses to your book? Have you learned anything from them?

TB: I do read the critics and the blogs and the reader comments on sites like goodreads. I'm pretty pathological in googling myself. I don't think I'm alone in that obsession, at least I hope I'm not. But overall I have been very pleased. I wish the book had gotten a little more attention, well that's an understatement, I wish that I had loads of adoring fans, absolute Beatlemania, but I'm pleased with what I got. I think my next book will probably get slagged a lot more than this one did, I can't help feeling the world was gentle on me because they knew it was my first time. As for learning anything, I don't know, I think most criticism has devolved into a roman thumbs up, thumbs down proposition. There's not much to learn from a world that simply says you're an A- or an "eight out of ten." I learn more from reading other writers. I just finished Hannah Tinti's "The Good Thief" which was marvelous and fun, I think I learned more in reading that than I did from any critics.

MT: What do you do when you are not writing?

TB: I ride my bike a lot. In cars you tend to miss the world, but on foot or on a bicycle you see everything.

MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

TB: The ideal reader to me is me. I have to be entertained and interested every step of the way or else it's not worth skipping a night out with my friends or an extra couple hours of sleep.

MT: What are you working on now Toby?

TB: I'm working on a prose novel. The second book is definitely more challenging, it's much easier to work when there are no expecations from the world, when you're an absolute nobody than when you're just only kind of a nobody, which is what I am now.

MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

TB: Terry Pratchett, David Foster Wallace, Barry Hannah are the three that come to mind first. DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is a shining masterpiece of non-fiction and Barry Hannah's Bats Out of Hell is simply mindblowing.

MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!

TB: It's pretty simple. Just write something you would want to read, something you couldn't put down. Put your skin into it. Everything else is just bullshit.

MT: Anything else you would like to say?

TB: I think writers have to be very competitive. We have to remember what we're up against, not just centuries of great writing but also movies, televisions, XBox and porn. We are competing against more noble causes, the urge to get a good night's sleep or to go out and play football in the park. We're fighting for eyeballs. Writers have to create something very compelling to fight against all these forces, or else we're just talking to ourselves.