CRK: My major stylistic influences have been the Modernists (especially T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner), some 20th century dark fantasists (Kathe Koja, Angela Carter, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison), and a lot of rock lyricists (Michael Stipe, Andrew Eldritch, Tom Waits, Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux). That's a pretty weird mix, I guess. There are writers who've influenced my content as well, a lot of the people named above, especially Eliot and Carter. Also, H.P. Lovecraft has been a major influence, in terms of what I'm writing about. Anyway, I guess I'd describe my own style as a synthesis of a lot of things that have been happening in literature this century, drawing most heavily on the prose poetry and stream-of-consciousness approach of Modernism. As for content, so far, I've been largely concerned with things like transformation (as in "Tears Seven Times Salt," for example), physical, psychological, and spiritual, and entropy, the interface between history and the present, the effects of history on the present. I happen to write about these things from the perspective of goth and punk culture, because that's my own background and because I've found them especially concerned with these issues.

PG: Why or how did you get into being a writer?

CRK: Because I saw thirty bearing down on me like a crazy man behind the wheel of a school bus, and I knew that I had to get my shit together. And I wasn't in good enough shape to dig ditches for a living.

PG: Could you tell me a little about your musical background? How does this integrate with your writing?

CRK: I've said in interviews before that music's something I do when I get scared I'm burning out as a writer, a distraction to clean my head, so to speak. Unfortunately, these days I don't have time for it. Last time out proved that, my time as the vocalist/lyricist of an Athens-based goth band called Death's Little Sister. I got into the band while Silk was being shopped around and just as I'd started writing for DC, and all of a sudden we had a pretty good local following, we were actually getting some radio time on college stations, people coming to the shows. I was the only person in the band that wasn't primarily a musician, and they started talking about touring. So I had to make a decision, because there wasn't time to be in the band and have a career as an author, and my writing was beginning to suffer, so I quit. But, music is very, very important to my writing, as a source of inspiration. I virtually never write without the headphones on.

PG: Could you describe your comic projects?

CRK: At the moment, I'm finishing up the third-year story arc for The Dreaming, called "Many Mansions," which I co-authored with Peter Hogan (that is, I wrote some of the issues and he wrote some of the issues; we only wrote one issue together). After that, I'll be doing The Dreaming solo. I'm also halfway through a mini-series for Vertigo called The Girl Who Would Be Death, which is also based on characters created by Neil Gaiman and will be released this fall. And there a couple of other mini-series on the back burner.

PG: Why do you write dark stuff?

CRK: I don't know that I can answer that. Or, there are too many ways I could answer that and every one of them would be equally valid. I could say it's because my mother read me Dracula when I was eight, or because I had a sort of shitty childhood and then my twenties were even worse. Or I could say that, looking at the world, I see little else worth writing about. I could go on and on, but there's no point. It's just what I do.

PG: [Ed. note: One of Paula's questions is  missing here, but judging from Caitlín’s answer, it must have been about her Left Bank/ Right Bank taxonomy of horror]

CRK: Where'd you hear about that? Okay, well, since you did ask . . .

The first step is to distinguish two general approaches to dark fantasy/horror as it exists today. Because I like the sociopolitical and historical connotations, I've chosen to refer to these as the Right Bank and Left Bank. The distinction between the two is predicated on one's approach to matters of morality and monstrosity.

(This approach is more categorical than historical, for the sake of simplicity. Exceptions always exist to every case stated here: I am concerning myself with gross generalization - the big picture. Also, please understand that at no point am I passing judgment. Personally, although I think my own work falls into the Left Bank category, I dearly love work on both sides.)

The Right Bank can be characterized as generally "moral" and by this I mean that it accepts and, more importantly, promotes a conventional morality, which is essentially Judeo-Christian in nature. It recognizes a proper Natural Order, which may, or may not, follow from a supernatural/Divine order and/or primary creative first (First Cause). It also recognizes an essential distinction between evil and good, a black-and-white perception with minimal tolerance, ultimately, for gray areas. It tends to reject relativist attitudes. Only very rarely is the story approached from the "monster's" POV and syntax, narrative structure, etc. tend to be straightforward. Today, the RB is dominated by writers such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Simmons, Robin Cook, Robert McCammon, John Saul, and F. Paul Wilson. In RB works, stories can usually be broken down into four stages: 1) an intrusion by supernatural on non-supernatural forces of disorder or deviance (read "evil" or "psychotic") that threaten the prescribed Natural Order, 2) the recognition of this violation by those existing within the now violated Order (read "good"), 3) an act/s of heroism which may often include self-sacrifice and inevitably leads to 4) the defeat of the Otherness and the restoration of Order.

(It's important to note that, occasionally, an author "crosses banks," and you'll have an essentially RB author, for instance, writing an LB story. Good examples would be Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, and "Apt Pupil.")

Therefore, to summarize, RB horror is basically conservative in its approach to the problem of evil, it serves to protect whichever status quo its author exists within, it leans toward theism, it is usually stylistically conservative, and it has little or no tolerance for monstrosity. In terms of numbers of works published annually, numbers of adherents, and possibly in terms of sales as well, the RB dominates contemporary dark fantasy.

(A bit ironically, I think the "splatterpunks" also have to be placed firmly on the RB. While they threw around a lot of gore and touted themselves as revolutionaries, the old morals were almost always there [see, for instance, everything by Skipp and Spector].)

The Left Bank is more difficult to characterize in terms of morality: authors may demonstrate amorality or an embrace of alternate moral codes traditionally deemed evil (immoral). It either rejects or refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the "proper" Natural Order, or may simply find itself incapable of relating to or embracing that Order. Traditional religion and theism may be rejected, vilified, or ignored altogether. Relativism is common, and classic distinctions between good and evil may be challenged, may be fuzzy (grayness is very common), or may be disregarded. Very often, the story is approached from the "monster's" POV and there may be a greater willingness as regards stylistic experimentation. Today, the LB is dominated by authors like Anne Rice, Kathe Koja, Poppy Z. Brite, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Nancy Collins, Neil Gaiman, and Harlan Ellison. LB works may be broken down into four subcategories: 1) tales told from the point of view of a sympathetic "monster" (Interview With The Vampire), 2) tales where non-"monsters" embrace and/or at least manage to come to a truce with the intrusive, Other force (Lost Souls), 3) tales where the protagonist/s come to realize that they are or have become the pervasive "evil" in the world (I Am Legend), and 4) tales where the intrusion is clearly undesirable and disruptive (although it may also be very attractive) but cannot be defeated, regardless of the characters' actions or motives (H.P. Lovecraft, Kathe Koja, Shirley Jackson). I guess, if asked, I'd say Silk falls into that fourth category.

Therefore, to summarize, LB horror is, in its rejection of the status quo's solutions to the problem of evil, inherently avant-garde. Even if it wishes to preserve the status quo or some particular order, it is incapable of doing so (good examples here would be Peter Straub's Ghost Story and many H.P. Lovecraft works). More often, it intends to tear down and/or rebuild our perceptions of "evil." There are far fewer LB authors, although some (Anne Rice and Clive Barker, for instance) may be quite successful.

So, today the LB is dominated by two schools:

1) The NeoRomantics (Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, Melanie Tem, Christa Faust, etc.), which in a sense is oddly retro in that it seems to embrace the values and many of the perspectives of the Romantic Movement (1798-1832), usually including (and championing) sexuality (often "deviant"), a sense of the pastoral/pagan, attraction to darkness, and distinctly Byronic heroes/heroines. There is a tendency toward idealization and "flowery" language, sensuous prose. NeoRomantics often seem "hopeful" about the future, so long as a new Order or perspective is accepted. Unlike the Romantics, the NeoRomantics do not, in general, display a disdain for technology, although they may reject the scientific approach. This group roughly corresponds to LB categories 1 and 2 above.

2) NeoModernists or PostIndustrial Gothicists (both of these terms are actually misleading and inappropriate, too inclusive, and I'm still looking for a better label for this category -- for instance, it's hard to exclude some of the RB works from a phrase like PostIndustrial Gothicist), who have basically taken up the themes of alienation, decay, disintegration, etc. that characterized literature (Joyce, Pound, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, etc.). NeoModernist horror writers include Kathe Koja, William S. Burroughs, Harlan Ellison, etc. Settings tend to be urban, often inner city. Intense singular POVs are common, often to the point of narrative claustrophobia. Unconventional style is also common, often employing devices such as stream-of- consciousness or impressionism to attempt to provide a more realistic portrayal of human thought and speech. Sex is viewed less positively than by the NeoRomantics, and there's more emphasis on intellect than physical sensation. The NeoModernists rarely seem "hopeful" about the future, with characters tending toward nihilism, even though they continue to strive for reintegration. This group roughly corresponds to LB categories 3 and 4 above.

A really easy way to envision the overall RB/LB dichotomy is to consider Beowulf vs. John Gardner's Grendel. Or Dracula vs. The Vampire Lestat. Or The Shining vs. The Haunting Of Hill House. Another one, contrast Peter Straub's Ghost Story and Stephen King's It — they're essentially the same stories, but take radically different approaches to the intrusion of the Other upon the world and our effectiveness in countering that Other. They arise from wildly differing world views, or "paradigms" (to use the terminology of T.S. Kuhn). I would describe RB as conservative and often retrogressive, and LB as radical (not to be confused with "liberal") and often transgressive. RB reaffirms the "rightness" and legitimacy of the status quo through victory over forces that would alter the Order of things; LB denies that legitimacy and/or effectiveness either through embracing disorder/change or through the repeated failure to prevent it.

I've already taken lots of flack over this model, notably from T. Liam McDonald (who called it "that great evil deconstructionism" — it is, of course, the exact opposite of deconstruction). I think people think I'm saying that LB is superior to RB, or is some sort of hip new thing that will supplant RB. I'm not saying that at all.