Growing up as a product of the black civil-rights movement, I had a lot of different models for black weirdness, whether it's Richard Pryor or James Baldwin or Jimmy Walker.

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel.

I started writing in the '90s, so I was free to just have an eccentric career and not conform to some idea of what a black writer has to do. I didn't have the burden of representation.

For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job.

If the 20th century was marked by travel - planes in flight - then the events of 9/11 ushered in the age of the burning aftermath.

The basic thing with adventure medicine or extreme medicine is that you are going to places where humans don't belong and people will certainly get into trouble.

So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.

Just as you should never confuse the law with common justice, intelligence should not be confused with common sense. Some of the brightest people in the world have no idea how to cross the road.