When I was writing The Invisibles, I thought, If I’m going to be sitting in the house writing all day, then on weekends I want to look like this cool comic character so more girls will like me. I shaved my head and dressed more like King Mob. It was an art thing, and it was also an occult thing. I could make things happen by putting King Mob through certain things in the comic, like a voodoo doll. If he met a certain girl, three weeks later she would turn up in my life. It became hard to tell his life and my life apart. It got out of control–I ended up in the hospital because of it. In the comic, King Mob’s cheek is eaten away by something; within three months, I’d gotten an infection that ate right through my cheek. I was conjuring these scorpion gods, and I got stung by them. That’s not to say scorpion gods are real, but you can make things happen by believing in them hard enough.