Writing is an act of empathy. You are occupying and understanding a point of view that might be alien to your own--and work is often the keyhole through which you peer.

People talk about me as masculine. Because of the way I walk and talk and crank out pull-ups and smell like bacon.

As in the case of many of the stories that I've written I'm not trying to editorialize. I don't want there to be a message at the end of anything I write. Otherwise you wouldn't trust the characters. They'd feel less organic and more like puppets that are sharing the author's opinion.

I have a scenario but almost always it's entwined with at least one person to begin with. Then I sort of expand from there and I'm thinking about books novels. I've got these scrolls of paper that I hang up in my office and this is my idea room, my nightmare factory, and I have a big title at the top of the scroll and on the left hand side I have these character sketches on the characters, and then once I figure out who they are I can figure out what they want and once I figure out what they want I'm able to put obstacles in the way of that desire, and that's where plot springs from.

You can't teach talent, but you can teach people how to read strenuously and mimic the moves of rock-star writers so that they eventually accumulate a toolbox of skills.

I grew up on genre - on Westerns, spy thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy novels, horror novels. Especially horror novels.

I think everyone can relate to the werewolf myth - because we've all, as a result of alcohol, drugs, exhaustion, rage, gone off the leash and come to regret it later. I appeal to this psychologically - the unleashed id - but with a biological cause; I'm hopefully making possible supernatural circumstances.