It's Not Like It Ruined My Life,

Writing Short Stories Was Kind Of Like I Was Cheating The Whole Time, In Some Way. I Went Back And Forth Between Writing The Novels And Sort Of Sneaking Out To Work On Stories Occasionally. These Stories Were Written Over The Last 10 Years Or So, As I Was Taking Breaks From The Novels I've Written.

I Start With An Image, Then I Go From The Image Toward Exploring The Situation. Then I Write A Scene, And From The Scene I Find The Character, From The Character I Find The Larger Plot. It's Like Deductive Reasoning - I Start With The Smaller Stuff And Work Backward.

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.

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.

You Can't Tell People How To Feel When They Read Your Work. You Can Only Hope To Connect.