My Main Reader Was My Wife Sheila,

I Still Think About The Writers I Loved When I Was A Kid.

I'd Read An Enormous Amount But Had Spent So Much Time In My Own Head That I Didn't Have Extensive Social Skills. Suddenly I Was In This World Where I Was Surrounded By These Incredibly Polished And Wealthy Kids Who Had Gone To Prep Schools, And I Felt Daunted By Them. I Don't Think People Were Aware Of How Full Of Anxiety I Was... For A Long Time I Felt Like I Was Living In A Place Where I Shouldn't Have Been.

I Never Wanted To Get To A Point In My Life Where I Knew What Was Going To Happen Next. I Felt Like Most People Just Couldn't Wait Until They Found Themselves Settled Down Into A Routine And They Didn't Have To Think About The Next Day, Or The Next Year, Or The Next Decade Because It Was All Planned Out For Them. I Can't Understand How People Can Settle For Having Just One Life.

I Usually Have More Than One Thing I'm Working On At Once - I've Been Working On Three Different Novels. When I Get Stuck On One, I Hop Back And Forth.

I'm Certainly Very Influenced By What You Would Call "contemporary Headline Horror," Stuff That Is True Crime Or For One Reason Or Another Catches Our Attention In The Media, Those Strange Cases That We End Up Obsessing About. I'm Always Influenced By Weird Anecdotes And News. And, You Know, Lastly, Probably Things That Have Happened To Me In My Own Life.