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If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

It takes a lot of adrenaline and fear to make me actually write.

I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.