Starting a blog always seems a bit like starting a relationship. It carries with it a taste of autumn, not quite cold, but not uncommonly warm. It makes me want a hot cup of coffee and a comfortable chair.

I recently started re-reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and I found myself again in love with the novel. I was forced to read it in high school and I was too enamored of Frankenstein to give Stoker's work its due. Now a bit older, I find that it has a sort of magic to it that I missed the first time.

Thinking on Stoker's lasting impact on literature in general, not to mention the vampire novel itself, makes me wonder. How much impact can modern authors hope to have in a world of on-demand entertainment and streaming porn?

I look to authors like Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman to give me hope. American Gods is, to my mind, the perfect novel. It mixes literature and lore, the modern and the ancient, the sacred and the profane and pours them over a story that resonates timelessly. It is the definition of what a novel should be in my mind. It removes the reader from the mundane and thrusts him into the realm of impossible with such deft skill that the reader never wishes to leave.

Horns is another such book. It capitalizes on the terrors of reality and sets them seamlessly against the backdrop of mythology. It presents very real, if preternaturally flawed, characters that force the sweetest, most painful sort of empathy from the reader. The scariest parts of the book are entirely grounded in the real world, which is what brings that visceral and terrible dread to the reader as he sits there shaking his head and muttering "No, no, no..."

Where this is leading, if it leads anywhere at all, is to my own work. If reality, and the story of REAL LIFE lend such power, such force to a story, why use metaphysical elements at all? The truth is, when I read a book, I dont want to escape to be little Suzy Dinkins in her happy little tea party world. I don't want to be Jack Smith, angry CIA operative with a heart of gold and terrible, nagging gastro-intestinal distress. No, I want to escape to a world where I can make difference. Not to the starving children of East-West Asscrackistan where for only a dollar a day, I can ensure that this dying child can hear Dr. Suess tales.

Life isn't nice. It really isn't. I've seen places and things that I wish I could unsee. Things that I couldn't change, that no man could repair. Things that the gods were just too damned busy to watch over. That's the real horror to me. Man has no recourse against god. If one believes in predestination, we're all just rats in a maze, biting, roiling and rutting ourselves into oblivion for the amusement of the faceless beings above.

I write to escape all of that. I dance through worlds where man and gods exist side by side, where Death has a face and he may be hated, or even loved. It's a place where words resonate and actions matter. It's a place fraught with dangers to mind, body and soul. Yet in so many ways, it's safer than the world outside my door.

I hope you'll join me, here in this Darkness, and play in the mad realms behind my eyes. I promise, I don't bite. But I might be lying.