I think readers appreciate those of us who stay in the trenches and fight the good fight even when times get tough. I know that I, personally, lost respect for writers who, when there was a downturn in the market, started shouting from the rooftops that they wrote thrillers and suspense novels rather than horror. As far as I'm concerned, those wussboys should sever all ties with the horror community if that's the way they feel and get out of the way so real horror writers can do their work.

Names have power. In certain cultures, just speaking a man's name gives you mastery over him.

Hope was a dangerous emotion that more often than not led men into foolishness and peril, made them risk their lives and lose their wives and part with fortunes that they never recovered.

The Revelation was my master's project, and after I finished it, I thought I'd send it off to a publisher and within a year or so be a rich and famous writer. Two years later I finally sold it. For a whopping $4,000. A year after that, it finally came out. Which explains why there are all those terrible jobs on my resume!

A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories.

Real life ... it was an ambiguous world, where actions sometimes had no meaning, where chaos reigned and no one was allowed to see the big picture, only their small portion of it.

Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.