Interview by Kate de Meillon
A large part of the inspiration for Lost in the Garden comes from my 1980s childhood growing up in deepest rural Lincolnshire – it’s such a strange environment, especially having now largely lived in less remote places in recent years. You almost feel cut off from the rest of the country out in the middle of nowhere. The layers of history and pre-history, the sheer inscrutable nature of the landscape, it’s folk-horror to its core, even if you don’t realise it at the time. You could live there your entire life and never really feel you know the place. It seems to hold so many secrets… You never really shake the feeling of being an outsider, not from the people but from, the land itself. Even just as a small example, our telephone exchange was Loveden… named after the Loveden Hill, the local Anglo-Saxon burial ground!
I’m fascinated by all the little island villages in Lincolnshire. You’d hear names like Navenby or Sudbrook or Long Bennington for years, but unless you know someone who lives there, or they’re on one of your regular travel routes, you might never have cause to visit. And so you build up a synaesthetic image of them based solely on the names, how they sound, how the words are spelled – you get a feeling for the atmosphere of the place, they take on a colour or a flavour in your mind. Of course, when eventually you do happen to visit any of them, you discover they’re just little villages the same as any other, but it’s that synaesthetic impression which interests me. What if one of these villages has something wrong with it, what if it’s a dangerous village, what if something awful lives there?
2. Your writing has a dreamlike, almost hallucinogenic quality. How did you approach crafting that atmosphere, and were there any influences behind it?
Creating the atmosphere was one of my favourite parts of writing Lost in the Garden! I was in my element, really… one of the main things was making sure to give myself the space to allow my imagination to roam, not trying to second-guess or pre-emptively edit myself, just seeing where my brain would take me! Listening to the right sort of music to get into that headspace really helped (early Tangerine Dream is great for that, or certain horror film soundtracks such as Hereditary, Saint Maud or The Lighthouse – ones that are about creating a consistent mood rather than emphasising jump scares or tension), and then allowing myself to explore it and live inside it for a while.
Another big part of creating the atmosphere was translating those unsettling, intangible feelings of childhood into something that’d work on the page. I think Lost in the Garden could be described as Nostalgia-Horror as much as it could Folk-Horror, perhaps more so. Despite the fact that the characters are young adults, there’s an obsession with childhood memories and childhood nostalgia in the story – both directly, in the way that the presence of the village of Almanby causes long-buried memories to bob back up to the surface; but also the overall unsettling atmosphere of childhood: the confusing, fluid geography; the lurking figures in the corner of the eye; even the endless, oppressive summer with its phantom ice cream van. I wanted to evoke that disorientation of childhood, when you’re still exploring reality, you’re still building up your own picture of how things work and which things are true or not. So the book is about adults who find themselves trapped inside the disquieting uncertainties of early childhood, where anything might be illusory, where even the summer holds shadowy corners… And where the most important thing of all might be the pursuit of ice cream!
3. What’s your writing routine? Do you have any specific rituals when sitting down to write?
I love the romantic idea of writing in a local indie cafe, watching the world go by from behind my laptop. Unfortunately, I’m a terrible fidget and find is very hard to concentrate! The only place I can comfortably write is at my desk in my room, with the minimum of distraction.
It turns out – rather inconveniently – that I can only write after a meal. I work a little bit after breakfast, a little bit after lunch, and then I get the body of my writing done in the evening after dinner, usually for a few hours till I run out of ideas, fuel or concentration, whichever happens first. I’ve learned through long and painful experience not to even bother trying between about 3pm and dinner… I’ve never written anything of any worth in the late afternoon, that’s the dead spot in the day. The best use for it is a sly nap, frankly.
4. In an industry so dominated by the Big Five, it’s wonderful to see a book from an independent publisher gaining well-deserved recognition. Do you have any other indie recommendations for our followers?
It’s worth exploring the whole Dead Ink catalogue – Lucie McKnight Hardy’s Water Shall Refuse Them and Ania Card’s Above Us The Sea are particular highlights for me, but it’s all well worth diving into their entire range.
You Can order your copy of Lost in The Garden, and check out all of their other titles, direct from the Dead Ink Shop
