There's no denying that the way horror has been packaged in the past has done it no favours. Lurid black covers adorned with skulls, corpses crawling with insects and scantily clad maidens being chewed into by vampires -- all good clean fun, but it doesn't do much to give the genre an air of respectability or seriousness to the casual browser.

I like to think I'm positive and optimistic about things generally, but what I write does tend towards the darker end of the spectrum.

Do you have to feel something for it to be real or mean anything? Can you touch your dreams, taste your imagination.

Your life is a blank, and you're barely a shade across it.

Love is a warm brain, not a leaping heart.

The reaction to death is sometimes as violent as death itself. Shock throws a cautious coolness over your senses, but your stomach still has knots, your skin stings as if the Reaper is glaring at you as well.

I tend to believe that computers are drawing kids -- and adults -- away from reading purely because they provide an alternative, vast source of spare-time amusement and entertainment. I recently heard a frightening statistic: there are less than one million true readers in this country (those who read every day instead of one book per year on a beach). Terrifying.