Paul Neilan grew up in New Jersey before fleeing the Garden State for its polar opposite: Portland, Oregon. A graduate of Rutgers University, he worked a mind-numbing job in an insurance company where he spent much of his time asleep in the bathroom dodging his boss and his coworkers. It was in the uniquely creative zone of the disabled stall of that men's room, legs akimbo and drool puddling on the linoleum floor, that he began to hatch the idea for his first novel, Apathy and Other Small Victories.