I would say that in my black readership, more of my readers tolerate the horror aspect of my work, you know. 'I don't usually read this kind of stuff, but.'

I started out with almost entirely black fans except for a little handful of people in the horror writers' community, and those people really liked horror, you know. They will go to any lengths and read whomever they can find because they like that feeling of being scared.

My biggest luck was the Terry McMillan era, because what happened after the phenomenon of 'Waiting to Exhale' is that publishing woke up. They said, 'Wow. Black people do read.'

One thing I know that's true about horror fans of any color is they like to be scared. And the easiest place to be scared is in a new thing.

Sure, we think it would be great to live forever, but it really wouldn't.

I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.