A Quote by Leigh Bardugo
It wasn't until I picked up Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones and Stephen King that I found there were people who were like me.
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Neil Gaiman swooped into my life though another friend, Jason Webley, who knew we were fans of each other's work and introduced us via email. Neil and I, like me and Ben, just hit it off instantly.
I'm interested in everything. I don't see why Borges can't work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can't be mixed with Balzac. It's just storytelling; it's different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.
Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.
I think it was in sixth grade, though, when I picked up my first Stephen King book, which was 'It,' that knocked me over and terrified me for years. Then I never went back. I had to own every Stephen King book and read them at least three times. They would terrify me completely, but I couldn't stop. That became my preferred source of fiction.
I start my process hand written, and then I dump it in. It's like you're getting a second draft 'cause when I put it in the computer, I fix it and change stuff. That's my process. I picked that up from speaking to Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill. I was messing around with the idea of starting to write more, writing a book and doing things like this, and I reached out for advice. They were like, "Oh, we hand write, and then we dump it all in." I was like, "Great! There's no more blank pages."
By the time I got to college I had stopped reading books because I wanted to "be cool" and started reading books simply because I wanted to read them. I discovered heroes like Roth, King, Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, TC Boyle, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris. These people weren't trying to "rebel against the literary establishment." They were trying to write great, high-quality books that were as entertaining and moving as possible.
The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.
That to me was the most poignant part of Diana's wedding; as she was walking up the aisle and her eyes were going left to right, looking at people and smiling in the way that Diana did - and that diamond tiara glittering like mad. It was great.
Fairy tales, before they were sanitized, were very dark, and kids love that. 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman feels like Beckett for kids. I think there's plenty of room for that. And I think there's a danger of being too patronizing to children, having things too sanitized.
Diana Wynne Jones' excellent book 'The Tough Guide to Fantasyland' is a compendium of the sort of lazy writing that has given fantasy fiction - especially the sub-section that features elves and dwarves and other Tolkienesque elements - a bad name.
When we were done and not picked up to series yet, they wanted us to read lots of writers. I was like, "No." Then we finally were picked up. It is hard not to start thinking of story lines. It is like doodling.
Stephen King says that if you forget an idea, then it can't have been any good. He means he, not you. You are not Stephen King. Do not attempt to emulate Stephen King at home.
Engineering didn't take to me. And what saved me and kept me in college was I ran into ROTC cadets who were in a fraternity called The Pershing Rifles. And I found my place. I found discipline. I found structure. I found people that were like me and I liked.
The first time I ever met Stephen King, he came up to me, and we went to shake hands, and he had, like, this fake rubber rat that he kind of, you know, shook at me. You know, and I said, 'No, this is a cliche - this can't be. Stephen King is trying to scare me with a fake rat?' It was just really weird.
There were definitely songs in the past that were me dealing with living this gender dysphoria, and sometimes they were really direct and no one picked up on it - but oftentimes, they were more veiled in metaphor.
I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next.
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