I wanted to write a story set in the Lovecraftian universe that didn't gloss over the uglier implications of his worldview.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate.
I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.
I'm not a huge Lovecraft fan as far as that goes; I think there are some stories of his that are really quite wonderful, but for the most part, I have great difficulties with his prose - and the more you know about the man, the harder it is to separate him from the work in many ways.
If you have a beautiful story, it has to have conflict. If you don't have conflict, it can't be a good story.
When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.
Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.
I would never write stories with only despair and defeat and the dark side of life.
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.
To me, there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form - and local human passions and conditions and standards - are depicted as native to other worlds and universes.
People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.