Jim Dodson‘s beautiful golf memoir, A Son of the Game: A Story of Golf and Fatherhood, won the International Golf Network Book of the Year award. To celebrate the paperback publication this month, we’ve conducted a Q&A with Jim to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the book.

1. Describe your new book in one sentence.
A memoir about listening to the voice in your heart.

2. Where do you do your best writing?
Very early in my upstairs office at home or my back-of-the-building office at PineStraw Magazine. I’m a super-early riser, the result of being a newspaperman’s son and cutting my teeth on an afternoon newspaper.

3.  What is your motto or maxim?
Pay attention. Life is subject to change without notice.

4.  Do you have any secret skills (besides writing, of course?)
Gardening, landscape work. Probably should have been a professional yardman.

5.  Describe the plot of the first story you remember writing.
The story of a young city kid who spends the summer with his crusty widower grandfather in the country. I wrote it in high school after my grandmother died and won, unexpectedly, the city short story writing contest.

6.  If you had to change professions, and needed no credentials, what would you do?
Easy. Landscape designer.

7.  Which band would you like to have follow you around, playing the soundtrack to your life?
James Taylor and his band.

8. Where do you hope to catch people reading your new book?
Anywhere–as long as they’re enjoying it.

9.  What is your all-time-absolute-favorite book?
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter. (A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, close second)