Get an agent. Seriously, submitting stuff unagented means it will end up on the slush pile. An agent is the first quality filter, and a good agent is worth his or her weight in gold, as they'll often know the editors on a personal level and will be able to talk to them directly about the project.

Love is harsh, and it consumes. And more than anything, it demands sacrifice.

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.

Hate misleads, fear distorts and love blinds.

Any writer takes inspiration from what they read and watch, and over their career works on forming their own voice. I think it was probably Stephen King who made me want to become a writer.

Voyaging great distances -- through forests, from island to island, across plains and into the mountains -- is all about finding ourselves.

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.