The Muses Are Ghosts, And Sometimes They

Write With The Door Closed, Rewrite With The Door Open. Your Stuff Starts Out Being Just For You, In Other Words, But Then It Goes Out. Once You Know What The Story Is And Get It Right — As Right As You Can, Anyway — It Belongs To Anyone Who Wants To Read It. Or Criticize It.

Sometimes The Embers Are Better Than The Campfire.

It's Exciting And It's Thrilling And It's Not Particularly Threatening, Because They're Not Overtly Sexual. A Lot Of The Physical Side Of It Is Conveyed In Things Like The Vampire Will Touch Her Forearm Or Run A Hand Over Skin, And She Just Flushes All Hot And Cold. And For Girls, That's A Shorthand For All The Feelings That They're Not Ready To Deal With Yet.

We Live In A Society Now Where The Sexual Taboo For Children Has Really Passed By The Wayside. Any Nineyear-old Can Go Into A 7-11 And Check Out The Playmate Of The Month, But You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Death. You Don't Want Your Kids To Know About Disfigurement. You Don't Want 'em To Know About Creepy Things Because It Might Warp Their Little Minds.

Faith Is A Great Thing, And Really Religious People Would Like Us To Believe That Faith And Knowing Are The Same Thing, But I Don't Believe That Myself. Because There Are Too Many Different Ideas On The Subject. What We Know Is This: When We Die, One Of Two Things Happens. Either Our Souls And Thoughts Somehow Survive The Experience Of Dying Or They Don't. If They Do, That Opens Up Every Possibility You Could Think Of. If They Don't, It's Just Blotto. The End.