There's a lot of mystery just inherent in the story of 'Descender.' There's sort of a central mystery that runs throughout it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In terms of the secrets that imbue and underlie 'Fall on Your Knees', they were as much of a mystery to me as I was creating the story as they are to the readers.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.
The enduring appeal of mystery stories for all of us is that the world is a pretty confusing place. There's a lot of really unanswered things, and perhaps the scariest notion would be that there might not always be answers out there for us.
I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.
Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.
There's been Hollywood interest in a lot of the stuff that I've done, but 'Descender''s felt different right from the start for whatever reason. I don't know if that's because a lot of my other stuff's a little more idiosyncratic, and 'Descender' has a bit more of a high concept to it.
People love a good mystery; I understand that.
Mystery is something that appeals to most everybody.
I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.
I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.