So It Was Scary, But That's How

It Drains The Bars And Cafes After Hours, Concentrates The Wicked And The Guilty Along Its Chipped Formica Counter, And Thrums With The Gossip Of Criminals, Policemen, Shtarkers,and Schlemiels, Whores And Night Owls ... Three Or Four Floaters, Solitaries, And Drunks Between Benders Lean Against The Sparkly Resin Counter, Sucking The Tea From Their Shtekelehs And Working The Calulations Of Their Next Big Mistake.

In Later Years, Holding Forth To An Interviewer Or To An Audience Of Aging Fans At A Comic Book Convention, Sam Clay Liked To Declare, Apropos Of His And Joe Kavalier's Greatest Creation, That Back When He Was A Boy, Sealed And Hog-tied Inside The Airtight Vessel Known As Brooklyn, New York, He Had Been Haunted By Dreams Of Harry Houdini.

I'm Never Going To Be A Tom Clancy. And I Wouldn't Really Want To Be - Not That I Have Anything Against Him, And I Wish Him Continued Success - Because That's Not Why I'm Writing Novels. I'm Doing It Because I Have To. I Feel Like I Have To, Anyway.

I Suppose There Is Something Appealing About A Word That Everyone Uses With Absolute Confidence But On Whose Exact Meaning No Two People Can Agree. The Word That I'm Thinking Of Right Now Is Genre, One Of Those French Words, Like Crêpe, That No One Can Pronounce Both Correctly And Without Sounding Pretentious.

All The Preparation In The World Doesn't Avail You If You Can't Make That Imaginative Leap And Put Yourself In The Position Of The Characters You've Created, To Imagine What It's Like To Be Somebody Else.