Tough question. I've always loved the dark, ghost stories and the like... I was reading Poe and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde in fourth grade as well as writing my first "monster" stories. That was also when I became addicted to Dark Shadows. I read Carmilla for the first time in fifth grade, Frankenstein in the sixth. I got sucked into Dracula in high school and never quite came out.

I got deep into the older stuff in college - Varney the Vampyre, Matthew Lewis' The Monk, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto - our college library was a treasure trove of the stuff!

Music? Music never played that important a part in my life, but a friend introduced me to John Williams' score for Langella's Dracula, and thus began my love affair with horror soundtracks.

I've always been kind of dark and broody, I guess, which garnered me no friends whatsoever, which made me darker and broodier. Now, like Popeye, I am what I am, and anyone who doesn't like it can go directly to Hell without passing GO or collecting $200....