Though it might not be immediately apparent in my fiction, I am greatly influenced by, and enamoured with, realist writers. Authors such as Raymond Carver, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, and Cormac McCarthy inspire me every bit as much as Lovecraft, Campbell, Ligotti, Barron.
Lately I've been revisiting the brilliance of Eugene O'Neill. In this clip from Long Day's Journey into Night, Dean Stockwell delivers a soliloquy that, in my opinion, touches upon the ineffable every bit as well as the tales of Machen or Blackwood.
I strive for the genuinely uncanny in my fiction; for moments of stark, palpable, transcendental terror. But this is always, *always* footed in genuine humanness.
We did not build the constellations, but we named them. And by naming them, we forged a bond with them.
We are the fog people. In all our majesty and our monstrosity, our wretchedness and our divinity. We are the ghost story.
