So I rented a cottage in the country and spent a week with the manuscript, trying to get to grips with what needed doing. When I'd finished the first draft, I could see that I wasn't there yet the story came across as a sort of Boy's Own adventure with some scary bits embedded in it like currants in a cake. I think it was finding a way to infuse the whole story with a sense of creeping unease. How would he cope in darkness that lasts for months? I saw my protagonist overwintering alone in his haunted camp. At the time, I was missing the Arctic, and suddenly I realized that this would be my setting. I knew that at some stage I'd write a story set in Spitsbergen, but I didn't know what it would be about, because at the time I was deep into writing my children's series, Chronicles of Ancient Darkness so I just took loads of notes, and put it to the back of my mind.Ī few years after that, I began thinking seriously about writing a ghost story, because I've always loved them and wanted to try my hand at one. It was as if the land was watching all these tiny living creatures busily going about their lives. What struck me was the stillness of the place. We put in at several abandoned mines and derelict trappers' camps, and I remember looking out over a desolate bay, wondering what it must have been like to have overwintered there. It was the time of the midnight sun, and the whole place was teeming with wildlife. A few years later, I was travelling by ship around Spitsbergen.
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