Lilith Saintcrow — American Author born on December 30, 1976,

Lilith Saintcrow is an American author of urban fantasy, historical fantasy, paranormal romance and steampunk novels. Saintcrow was born in New Mexico. She currently resides in Vancouver, WA... (wikipedia)

It's always difficult to say goodbye, especially when one has spent a long time - literally years, in the case of a series - inside a character or two, suffering and celebrating with them.
Fight scenes are very physical for me. Sometimes I require my own body to move through them before I can tell where a character's likely to feel it.
If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences I've had, that need to be transformed.
As much as I devoured comics, I read non-graphic books exponentially more, so I'm not sure I can credit or blame them. Comics, however, taught me a lot about what makes a story arc work and how to bring a story to its natural resting place between issues.