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I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before.

I do know that I love placing my stories in Michigan because, if you collect all the ideas, it turns the whole state into one kaleidoscopic, frightening place. Michigan as house of horrors.

I always take a story that's kind of out there, like an urban myth. I take some possibility that people imagine, that they are familiar with, and try to turn it into a story.

There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about, but you can't know it all, and that's where imagination can work.

I've always set my stories in places I know well. It frees me up to spend more imaginative time on the characters if I'm not worrying about the logistics.

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

I'm not really a storyteller myself - I tend to get all tangled up when I try and tell stories.

In a long story like 'Weathercraft,' it becomes kind of convoluted. It can become perhaps difficult to remember what led up to whatever point you're at. I worried a little bit about people being able to keep the shape of the story in their heads while they were reading it, and not wonder how they got wherever they were.

I'm a great believer in research. I have to know about a place before I write a story that is set in that place.

My stories are often a little mysterious.