A Pretty Sight, A Lady

February, When The Days Of Winter Seem Endless And No Amount Of Wistful Recollecting Can Bring Back Any Air Of Summer.

In Ten Years I Will Be A Beautiful Charming Lovely Lady Writer Without Any Husband Or Children But Lots Of Lovers And Everyone Will Read The Books I Write And Want To Marry Me But I Will Never Marry Any Of Them. I Will Have Lots Of Money And Jewels Too.

I Was Already Doing A Lot Of Splendid Research Reading All The Books About Ghosts I Could Get Hold Of, And Particularly True Ghost Stories - So Much So That It Became Necessary For Me To Read A Chapter Of _little Women_ Every Night Before I Turned Out The Light - And At The Same Time I Was Collecting Pictures Of Houses, Particularly Odd Houses, To See What I Could Find To Make Into A Suitable Haunted House.

I Suppose, I Hoped, By Setting A Particularly Brutal Ancient Rite In The Present And In My Own Village To Shock The Story's Readers With A Graphic Dramatization Of The Pointless Violence And General Inhumanity In Their Own Lives.

I Have Always Loved To Use Fear, To Take It And Comprehend It And Make It Work And Consolidate A Situation Where I Was Afraid And Take It Whole And Work From There.