Wayne's not a fan of this idea. But since I was a little kid and finished The Dark Is Rising and read about Herne the Hunter in the WILDCARDS series... the mind's eye visual of The Wild Hunt has been something so powerful and evocative for me. The Dark Host. The Ghost Riders of the Sky.

Wayne sees the nightmarish quality of my Huntsman as a loner. A silent, shadow-wrapped assassin... the boogeyman who popped out of the darkness of your closet as a kid. I get those same goosebumps.

But it's mobs that scare me. Especially mobs of people I loved under the control of some malign entity. Betrayal is what scares me shitless.

And the Wild Hunt is mythologically huge. Like one of those Southern thunderstorms that shake the sky and the earth you stand on.

I hated the way it was handled in The Books of Magic. And everybody knows I have two undeniable seats of aggravation: my bottomless ability to procrastinate... and good ideas with the shittiest of execution.