Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.

As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don't like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.

Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them.

When I was young, I kept a diary for about 10 years and I had to write in it every day. Even on days when nothing seemed to happen, I made myself think of something to put in it.

Listen," I began, "this is an established,traditional form that-" "Traditional nothing.Where are your clothes?" "Clothes?" I said weakly. "I don't normally bother with them in this guise." "Well,you could put on a pair of shorts,at least.Your not decent." "I'm not sure they'd go with the wings..." The demon frowend,and blinked."Hold on,enough of this." "Lenderhosen would. They'd compliment the leather.

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, ect. (This latter was an observation I made on the edge of a lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.) We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing.

If anyone else asked that question, O He Who Is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of the disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue.