Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs

Horror.

The fantastical genre, you could call it.

See, that's the thing with people's actual lives.

I didn't spend most of my time living my actual life.

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I'm not sure.

The other spirits, the boring ones at least, they always want to know where you lived, where you worked, who you got married to.

But I didn't live in Bed-Stuy.

I lived in my head.

Spend too much time with the facts and you'll become a bore.

Have you ever read Nightfall?

An Asimov short story.

It's about a planet that has six suns, so it's always daylight.

And when there's an eclipse, civilization ends in madness and fire.

Not because of the darkness, but because of all the stars they can see in the firmament.

That's the very short version of it, but trust me, it's extraordinary.

Reading it was like seeing all those tens of thousands of stars in the night sky.

I was 13, perfect age really for a thing like that.

From that moment on, I spent most of my life in my head, dreaming up worlds, and then eventually writing them down.

You didn't have to meet your editors back then.

Didn't even have to talk to them over the phone.