The Happiest I Have Ever Been Is

There Are So Many People We Could Become, And We Leave Such A Trail Of Bodies Through Our Teens And Twenties That It's Hard To Tell Which One Is Us. How Many Versions Do We Abandon Over The Years?

I Wanted To Write A Horror Story. But In Some Ways, I Have Always Thought Of Myself As A Kind Of Ghost-story/horror Writer, Though Most Of The Time The Supernatural Never Actually Appears On Stage.

A Novel Requires A Certain Kind Of World Building And Also A Certain Kind Of Closure, Ultimately. Whereas With A Short Story You Have This Sense That There Are Hinges That The Reader Doesn't See. I Would Say That All Short Stories Have Mystery Naturally Built Into Them.

That's How I Work, Whether With Stories Or Novels - They Start With An Image That Comes To Me In A Daydream, And A Lot Of Times I'm Walking Around With These Pictures In My Head For Awhile Before I Start Writing.

The Earliest Impetuses For Writing, For Me, Were Simply The Strange Things I Happened To Notice In My Everyday Life, Stuff I Read About In The Grocery Store Tabloids My Mom Bought, Situations That Struck Me As Compelling, Anecdotes I'd Heard, Images, Words, Metaphors.