Robert Jackson Bennett’s first novel Mr. Shivers was honored with the Shirley Jackson Award for outstanding achievement in psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. His second novel, The Company Man, won an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. He lives in Austin with his wife and son. He blogs on his homepage and can be found on Twitter at @robertjbennett.

“Nothing is new. Ideas circulate. And they do not do so logically: you cannot trace an influence like tracing a bloodline on a family tree. Ideas travel through osmosis. They’re like a gas, swelling to fill their container. There is oh so very rarely an idea or an aesthetic that is wholly and completely new at the moment it is conceived. You don’t have an influence injected directly into your brain: you have to marinate in it for a long, long while.”