Artists are meant to be madmen, to disturb and shock us.

We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

I don't know why one author writes westerns while another writes detective novels. You don't know why. You go where the intensity is. I feel most comfortable writing about monsters. It's possible that I feel like a monster myself. Or maybe it's because we all have a monster inside of us, a vampire, a ghost, a witch or a werewolf. You do it because it works and it feels really right and authentic.

Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?

My last sunrise. That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise before it.

The earth here is beautiful. And it still belongs to the dead.