I think anyone who writes suspense fiction and says that King isn't an influence is either lying or being foolish.

'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I thought about doing it as a novella under a pseudonym, because I didn't want to damage my career.

I think if you looked at the kind of ebb and flow of supernatural fiction and horror fiction, it does seem to be more popular in times when were hammered over the head daily with threats from all angles, very real threats.

What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.

I'd worked at a small town newspaper, and I was thinking of all the strange stories that I had seen float through the newsroom in my time there that were dismissed as kind of amusing curiosities. Somehow from that I got to this idea of an eccentric alcoholic who built a lighthouse in the woods.

I started writing as soon as I started reading.

Adam Nevill a spine-chiller in the classic tradition, a writer who draws you in from the world of the familiar, eases you into the world of terror, and then locks the door behind you. The House of Small Shadows grows darker and takes on more menacing life with each step forward.

We understand tornadoes scientifically, but it still feels supernatural. The randomness makes it feel supernatural.

You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

Horror and supernatural novels give you a lot of what you look for in a crime novel, just with a twist that was very fresh for me as a reader.