Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness.

Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction.

Look. All books are weird when you think about it.... It goes without saying that real life is also weird.

When you're Dead ... you stay up all night long.

Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends.

I think that we want to be led slightly astray when we're being told a story. Just a little wrong footed.

In terms of style, too, I think I've been working with a somewhat limited -- although intentionally limited -- set of tools. So I'm attempting to be a bit looser as I start stories off. To digress. To make interesting mistakes.