Nobody likes a clown at midnight

We all have a tendency to want order in our lives. But order presupposes authority, and authority presupposes, sooner or later, that we'll all need hooves. It's going to happen sooner or later, isn't it? You know it is.

I never have a thematic intention at the outset.

Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life's a fiction and the world's a lie, so put on some Creedence and let's get high.

But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

Most gothics are overplotted novels whose success or failure hinges on the author's ability to make you believe in the characters and partake of the mood.

Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list.