HORROR AND ME.
When I was twelve years old, I snuck into the bedroom of the lodger who was staying with my Nan at the time and rifled through her book collection. The first book I pulled out was Stephen King's PET SEMATARY, and I tore through it in two days. To a kid who found it impossible to sit through The Twilight Zone, this was a very big deal. Over the next few years, I not only devoured every King book I could get my hands on, (sometimes even with my own money), but every other horror book I could find as well. Some of them were brilliant, others not so much, but the experience opened my eyes to something: contrary to what I'd spent many a sleepless night worrying about, it was fun to be scared. I also discovered that horror was not - as I kept hearing from many a teacher and snotty elderly bus passenger - the bastard cousin of the literary world. It was cool, it was clever, it made me want to pee my pants, and I wanted to write it.
