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‘‘It’s funny – I never think of the Sandman Slim books as horror. (I still need somebody to sit down and explain which are the horror parts.) Lots of other people do. But the standard horror format is to establish normalcy, have it slowly break down and then introduce the monster or the horrors. My work doesn’t do that. I start with the monsters right in the mix. That’s one of the things I admire about Clive Barker. He placed his monsters front and center, and I always loved that. I like to make the monsters central figures in my own work, probably because I identify more with the monsters than I do with the regular people.

‘‘There’s a long history. I had a novel called Blind Shrike, and I was just giving that away, because I had a hard time selling it. It was that classic thing where editors wanted to buy it, and then people up the line said, ‘Oh, we don’t know how to market this.’ Out of annoyance or bullheadedness, just said, ‘I’ve written a book, and I’m not going to leave it gathering dust on my harddrive.’ That’s what I did with Blind Shrike: ‘Here’s a PDF. Download the

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