A Note on Reader Mail (and the One Letter I Keep)

I get letters sometimes. Most of them say some version of "I couldn't sleep after reading your book." I take that as a compliment. It is the highest compliment, actually. It means the work got in.

I try to respond to all of them, though I'm not always fast about it. If you've written to me and haven't heard back, I haven't forgotten. I'm just slow. The writing takes most of what I have, and what's left over goes to the people in my immediate life first. I think that's the right order of priorities, even if it means some letters wait longer than they should.

But there is one letter I keep. I've kept it for two years now. I'm not going to quote it here — it's not mine to share — but I'll tell you what it said, in general terms.

The letter

It was from someone who had read one of my short stories — not a novel, a short story that appeared in a small journal that I don't think many people read. They said the story had described something they had experienced and never been able to name. Not a plot event. A feeling. A specific quality of wrongness that they had carried for years without language for it.

They said: "I didn't know other people felt this. I thought it was just me."

That is the thing I am always trying to do. Not to frighten people — or not only to frighten them — but to name the thing that doesn't have a name yet. To give language to the experience of wrongness that most of us carry quietly and alone.

"I didn't know other people felt this. I thought it was just me."

Horror, at its best, is a literature of recognition. Not surprise. Recognition. The reader encounters something on the page and thinks: yes, that. Exactly that. I have always known that thing was there and I have never been able to say so until now.

That letter reminded me why I write what I write. I keep it in the drawer next to my desk. On the days when the work feels pointless — and there are many such days — I take it out and read it again.

If you've ever wanted to write to me, the contact page is there. I mean it when I say I read everything.