I don’t have those moments when I’m about the work but in odd times between, when something rears up from the depths to remind me of my secret life: a pulse of fear, and then I remind myself that it’s breakfast (or lack thereof) talking, or sleep deprivation, too much coffee or not enough, or the lack of a cigarette.

If I could quit smoking… well, I’m down to five cigarettes a day. It definitely isn’t a habit that comports with ancient virtue… or ancient vice either. They’d have done opium, perhaps, or hashish, but not tobacco, because that’s an import from the New World. And even the ancient Americans didn’t do it the way we do it, concentrated and in industrial doses, daily. We take that which was a sacrament and turn it into a quotidian vice.

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The work in question: realistic re-enactment of Iron Age human sacrifice. The speaker: the serial killer in The Necromancer and the Barbarian: A Love Story.