One of the things I rarely do is write about sex.

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.

Even when our death is imminent, we carry the image of ourselves moving forward, alive, into the future.

You can't count on notoriety lasting very long, and there's no way to predict whether anyone will care about your books or you in three years, let alone ten or twenty.

It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

My main reader was my wife Sheila, and I haven't written a lot since she died.