Ford on His Own "Shadow Year"

I don't think I have quite read anything like The Shadow Year before. It was interesting, although i'm not sure I would call it "an obvious fantasy" by any means.

But anyways, I went looking for Ford's own take on his novel and found these quotes from his on his work:

"A lot of the Shadow Year is based on my life--it's very personal. I started writing it and then I got stuck. It wasn't anything too traumatic, but I wanted to really get down what had happened."

I wish we knew what exactly was personal about this story for him. Was it the characters? I could see them passing as believable people, mostly the mom. Or was it the events? While slightly....more difficult for me to image actually happening in real life, they would definitely be traumatic. (A  pedophiliac ice cream man turned clown? Holy crap, that's terrifying). Or perhaps it was just based off of little things like the play-village in the basement or the school projects that could have existed in Ford's childhood.

"The first time I finished The Shadow Year, it was too subtle. Nobody could figure out what the hell was going on. Then, with a lot of encouragement from my editor, I went back to it. She said, 'Here's the secret: it's fiction. Make it a story.' So when I went back I kept that in mind, and that allowed me to finish it. Before that it was really kind of a memoir (god forbid). It's based on the novella 'Botch Town'."

Honestly, I still can't figure out what the hell is going on. I mean, I have interpreted Ford's work to fit my own perception of what it means to me, but I am almost positive it has a completely different meaning to him; it has to, seeing as how personal it is to him and how it originally was a memoir-ish creation.  I also looked for the "Botch Town" novella online, but I can't seem to locate it. 

Ford seems a very mysterious author and person to me. His own website is very....simplistic, and I wasn't able to find too many interviews with him out there. While it annoys me because I want to know why his book was written how it was and what it meant to him, I can accept his secretive ways just because it gives respect to his work almost by leaving it with such an anonymous atmosphere around it.