The 2015 Costa first book winner shares the language of pikes,haggs and landmarks in England’s north that inspired his novel One of the joys (and frustrations) of writing a novel is that what you set out to do isn’t always what you stop up doing. It wasn’t my intention to necessarily write a gothic horror and since the publication of The Loney I’ve been asking myself how it became one. As far as I can gain out, the answer lies in the landscape that first inspired me.
Silverdale lies approximately a third of the way around the curve of Morecambe Bay, and like many places in that area,it changes constantly at the whim of the tide. The sea can be a mile out across the mudflats or it can brim against the inland flood defences. A channel here today might be gone tomorrow. Such is the strength of the water that it can leave behind noteworthy piles of heaved-up stone shaped to its swell. It’s a uncertain place. The weather quickly turns. Distances are tough to judge. It’s easy to walk out just a little too far on to the sands and hear them shifting and sucking around you as if the whole place might collapse at any moment.
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Source: theguardian.com