What Do I Want?

As I sit here to stare at the blank page and to worry about the upcoming book, I ask myself: What do I want?

What do I really want?

I want to show different ways to write horror fiction. These ways are not better than approaches used by other people, and -- I hope! -- not worse, but they are my ways, and they do the work I ask of them.

Along with methods, I want to show an imagery that is mine, based on dreams, on hillside wanderings near midnight, on things half-seen beyond the pines and aspens but felt right down the spinal chord. I trust my obsessions, even as they force me to question my competence in describing them.

I want to satisfy readers impatient with easy tricks and cliched concepts, readers with no tolerance for show-offs, bores, and fakes. Readers who toss books aside in disgust at such things are the people I respect as my friends and allies.

Above all, I want to be known as a writer who did his best even if the odds were against him, even if he had no patience for the postmodern smog or the zeitgeist of corporate consumerist fairy tales that guarantee public acceptance. I want to make other people with similar allergies and doubts feel less odd, less isolated, less alone. You are not the only ones who feel this way.