I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.
I like to end stories where the readers have a little room to run. They can resolve things as they like in their own mind.
I think the best writers are voracious readers who pick up the cadences and the feel of narration through a number of different books. And you begin by maybe copying the style of writers that really knocked you out.
Did it [cocaine] for about eight years. Not a terribly long time to be an addict I guess, but it is longer than World War II.
I didn't go to bars much. One drunken asshole was all I could handle and that was me. I wrote. I don't remember a lot of it.
When I gave up dope and alcohol, my immediate feeling was 'I've saved my life, but there'll be a price because I'll have nothing that buzzes me any more'. But I enjoyed my kids. My wife loved me and I loved her. And eventually the writing came back and I discovered that the writing was enough. Stupid thing is that probably it always had been.
I think most of us can remember from our own childhood, just in the Disney cartoons, things that frightened us profoundly. For me it was Bambi, the scene when the forest was on fire. That was something I had nightmares about. I can't imagine being a little kid of eight and seeing Night Of The Living Dead with living corpses eating the flesh of living people.
