SOURCE: An interview in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 223, No. 4, January 28, 1983, pp. 39-40.

In the following interview, Straub discusses the progress of his literary career.

First in Ghost Story and Shadowland, and now again in his new novel Floating Dragon, horror novelist Peter Straub has worked to nudge his readers—right off the edge of a cliff, he says. "I want readers to feel as if they've left the real world behind just a little bit, but are still buoyed up and confident, as if dreaming. I want them left standing in midair with a lot of peculiar visions in their heads."

In Floating Dragon, he admits, the nudge has escalated into a shove. "I just wanted to explode the line of imagery that I stumbled onto in Ghost Story and tried to refine in Shadowland," he says. "I wanted a really gaudy fireworks display—stuff that would make the...