I grew up writing about the paranormal, and I blame too many Saturday mornings watching 'Scooby Doo.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I love the paranormal, because there, every genre I write can become one beacon for my imagination.
I've been a huge fan of all things paranormal my whole life. For me, it was always a question of when, not if, I was going to write a paranormal series. I dipped my toe in the genre by incorporating a mystical curse into the 'MacCarrick Brothers Trilogy.'
I think I'm probably a monster-of-the-week guy, and that comes back down to my old favorite show, which as a kid was always 'Scooby-Doo.'
My kids are fanatical about 'Scooby-Doo', and I think that the creators of 'Scooby-Doo' somehow tripped across some kind of magical hypnotic formula that lures children. It's far more fascinating to them than anything else on the air.
I absolutely adore writing books with paranormal elements - and I love creating the often-complex worlds and/or plots that go along with those stories - but at the heart of all of that ,you have the characters, and when you get down to the core of it, it's spending the time with the characters that is what I truly love.
My mother fed my love of demons, science fiction, and paranormal. She was a devout horror movie fan who kept me up until the wee hours to watch 'Outer Limits,' 'Night Gallery,' 'Twilight Zone,' and 'Star Trek.' We lived to watch those reruns.
From a young age I was obsessed with the mysterious, the esoteric, the paranormal.
When I wrote 'The Shadow Thief,' I had an obsession with Peter Pan. I get focused on things. In fact, I was an absolute horror to live with at that stage. I had a big fight with my mum because I wanted her to change the windows so Peter Pan could visit me.
One of my favorite ways to write paranormal, as in the 'Wake' trilogy, is to write very normal characters with just a hint of something other-worldly. Like somewhere, maybe, someone really can get sucked into other people's dreams.
I grew up in a haunted house, reading Dr. Seuss.