When you grow up in one town and your life revolves around it, you are very aware of any darkness on the edge of town. That's because it's scary and it's inviting.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
Every town has its dark side, but I spend time in New York for my dark inspiration.
Darkness might seem to obscure what's happening, but I find it's always pretty revelatory: it brings out the awe in us, the fear in us, the excitement of exploring the hidden or unknown. It seems to conceal, but it really shines a light on what we want, what we need, and what we'll do to get it. Especially when we think no one can see us.
I've always been a person afraid of the dark. I was taught that when you have complete darkness, that's when spirits walk. In our house when I was growing up, all the doors were always cracked a little bit at night so you could get light into the room.
'The Waking Dark' is about what happens when something awakens a town's darkest impulses and unleashes them on the world.
Every time that I'm in the dark, I imagine what might be lurking in the shadows. It's kind of like a drug in that way - darkness seems to change the way I think - making me way more prone to fear.
I think we're all a little afraid of the dark. If you lived in the country, as I did, there's nothing quite like country dark, which was really black. And as a child, your imagination runs wild.
'Darkness' is a subjective word; it depends what your viewpoint is and how you live life.
Perhaps because my town was so naturally gothic in its architecture and relative isolation - the roads often closed in winter - my stories tended toward the ghostly and the creepily suspenseful right from the get-go.
Everybody has a lot of darkness in them because without that you're not a whole person.