What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.

With the knowledge of her aloneness came a rush of self-declaration: “I will not be nothing.”

The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

My kind [vampires] does not surprise easily," he said. "You surprised me, this morning. I have thus used up my full quota of shock and consternation for some interval." I stared at him. "You made a *joke*." "I have heard this kind of thing may happen.

But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.

My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.

The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.