The books are recordings; that's what they have to be, recordings of the writing. They have to be happening to me.

My fear, as a writer, is that I am a curiosity. That I can only bring you this peculiar condition from far away, from outside, and if you look at it then it will mean nothing. So, I have to pretend it's more than that. Horror writing lets me do that.

As a kid, I couldn't articulate it but I sought out things that could. At first it was horror films - extreme panic and terror, grotesque and maniacal. These films calmed me and made me feel more connected in my experiences.

A horror novel should reveal to you that you are falling apart. That there are ways your imagination can be made different. Can threaten what you think is. You should be holding onto that tree or rock screaming. Or laughing. Not at absurdity, either: absurdism is just a bourgeois and reactionary nostalgia for good, stable meaning.

I believe the book should be something you protect yourself from by returning to your life. But it has threatened your life. Not by saying something it believes is true, but by attacking it.

The books are recordings; that's what they have to be, recordings of the writing. They have to be happening to me.

I think horror should have occult elements, not as its subject but as its ambition. It is a machine that destroys illusion. I, of course, never achieve this, but I always act as if I can.