Cynthia Shannon asked Brenna Yovanoff:

Do you look to incorporate your own fears phobias into your writing, or do you prefer to avoid it?

Brenna Yovanoff Ooh, interesting! As with so many things in my life, the answer is … complicated.

I've never tended to be a very phobic person, with one exception. I happen to think that water is just very, very creepy. But since I can't write every new book about exactly how scary I find water, I've mostly been finding ways to work it in on the side.

Each of my books has some thematic water going on, even if it's just geographical, like the river that cuts through the middle of Hannah's town in Paper Valentine, or something soft and sad, like the recurring water motif surrounding Daphne and Truman in The Space Between. (More overtly, The Replacement is filled with rain, because I think rain is some of the creepiest water there is, and Fiendish has all the water ever in the whole world, because it takes place in a region full of creeks.)

I would write more about water if I could do it without repeating myself, but I have a feeling it would start to sound like "Water is so creepy, it's really really still just so creepy. Again."

So instead, I also spend a lot of time with my second major fear, which is dogged, inflexible, absolutist thinking. (Hello, Azrael.)

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