I would say that in my black readership, more of my readers tolerate the horror aspect of my work, you know. 'I don't usually read this kind of stuff, but.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started out with almost entirely black fans except for a little handful of people in the horror writers' community, and those people really liked horror, you know. They will go to any lengths and read whomever they can find because they like that feeling of being scared.
I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.
I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.
Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.
I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.
I've always suffered from being labelled a horror writer - just because I didn't go to university, just because I still talk in my natural voice, just because I'm not as articulate as Martin Amis.
My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
People like to pigeonhole. People like to label - not just books and movies, but everything in their life. If people want to call me 'literary horror,' I guess that's fine. What I'm trying to do is be both thrilling and thought-provoking.
I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.