When DEMONS IN THE AGE OF LIGHT was being edited, it was pointed out to me that I have a tendency to over-use certain words in the manuscript. Namely, these were: strange, dark, ominous, black, void, translucent, glistening, algae, violent, abyss. (However I maintain that the sentence "The strange black ominous algae glistened translucently in the darkening void of the violent abyss" does not appear once). It made me think…do the words that crop up a little too often in our written work reveal something about our soul? If so, I may be in trouble…

Actually, that list of words reminds me strikingly of the poems I used to write when I was a teenager. You know, the kind everyone writes at 2 a.m. as a substitute or accompaniment to minor acts of self-mutilation. Except I'm gratified to note that I managed to avoid using the word 'obsidian' anywhere in DEMONS—it was a particular word-fetish of mine when I was fifteen. You know, obsidian butterflies, obsidian tears, obsidian porcupines…obsidian made everything 20% cooler. I think—I hope—that overall, my prose has improved somewhat in the past 8 years, but it seems the remnants of my teenage angst still linger in the darker (violent, glistening…) corners of my writing.

[Look, my seventeen-year-old self is filled with so much ennui

that she has literally turned blue].