But horror admits it’s the imagination at play, just maybe with the lights dimmed, and it’s a feeling I can really get behind.

Even documentaries are slanted, we all know that, so to turn to art for a photorealistic reflection of life always feels awkward. Realism has never numbered me a friend, and I don’t look for any realistic anchors in anything. On a headier note, I love that horror admits that it’s fiction. Q: What is it about horror that appeals to you?Ī: So many things. Every time I sat down to work on the book I felt like I was entering its world, rather than it being a reflection of mine. I suppose that sort of island feel, a good neighbourhood surrounded by freaky ones, could’ve padded the isolation in the book, but I don’t think so. But if you went two streets too far in either direction things got sketchy in a hurry. It’s a crazy neighbourhood used to be Motown stars had homes there - Berry Gordy the people who started K-Mart Mark Twain built his daughter a house across the street from the one I stayed in. Q: How much of the novel was inspired by real life ie., news headlines regarding random attacks or the decline of Detroit? (Filmically, parts of Detroit would make the perfect setting…)Ī: I wrote Bird Box in the attic/servant quarters of an old, wonderful mansion in Detroit. When I got to work on the latter, I realized she was fleeing the former, and the book became suddenly clear. The other was only an image, a woman traveling down a river, blindfolded. One was of a group of people forced to face infinity, and what that encounter might do to their minds. Instead, there were two ideas that followed me into every room I went. I can’t be sure when or where I was when Bird Box came thundering down the hall.

Q: What was your inspiration for Bird Box?Ī: Being a horror fan, as well as (at turns) a madcap, a nervous wreck, an obsessive thinker, a tall person, a man child, and a pool player, my eye is always traveling the room, looking for an idea that could balloon into a novel. There’s the one about the monster in the…” There’s the one about the monster in the woods. There’s the one about the monster in the water. “OK, there’s the one about the monster in the woods… OK, that’s good. At summer camp, as a kid, I remember counting on my fingers the books I needed to write. Q: When did you decide to start writing books?Ī: That was always the plan. That sliver of encouragement ignited a lifetime of writing and reading. When I looked up, mom and dad were beaming. I remember opening it and reading it to my family. The first thing I read was something about foxes stealing crabapples from trees. Wrote a ton of comic books, all weird characters, half men-half buildings, that kind of thing. It was about a space-traveling dog who was Earth’s ambassador to Jupiter.

Q: What was the first thing you wrote and what was the reaction to it?Ī: I tried to write a book in fifth grade.

Bird box novel