I Tend To Like Order In Almost

I've Been Reading Peter Straub Since I Was A Teenager, And His Work Is Hardwired Into My Brain. A Dark Matter Contains Echoes Of All That Has Been Great About Straub's Previous Work And Builds Upon It. This Rashomon-like Tale Is As Spooky And Frightening As Anything He Has Written, But It's Also An Intense And Moving Celebration Of Love. Out Of The Darkness Comes, Ultimately, A Surprising And Haunting Sense Of Joy.

I Wanted To Write A Horror Story. But In Some Ways, I Have Always Thought Of Myself As A Kind Of Ghost-story/horror Writer, Though Most Of The Time The Supernatural Never Actually Appears On Stage.

When I Was Younger I Was Attracted To People Who Had That Kind Of Artifice - People Who Were Incredibly Polished And Had A Complex Persona That Always Seemed To Be Turned On. I Was Really Interested In These Kinds Of People Because I Felt So Unformed.

I Also Have Just My Own Limits About Stuff. I'm Not Interested In Writing Graphically About Sexual Assault For Example. I Feel Like The Stuff That I'm Fascinated By Is The Stuff That's Part Of The Public Imagination Of What Horror Is. The Bleakness Is A Different Issue. I Think That Just Stems From My Personality. I Wish That I Offered A Little More Glimmer Of Hope Sometimes.

The Earliest Impetuses For Writing, For Me, Were Simply The Strange Things I Happened To Notice In My Everyday Life, Stuff I Read About In The Grocery Store Tabloids My Mom Bought, Situations That Struck Me As Compelling, Anecdotes I'd Heard, Images, Words, Metaphors.