I don’t consciously use people or places I know in my books, but it is obvious in The Other Boy that I have been inspired by the places and individuals that surround me. Most obviously is the setting of Peasedale Forest and the woods where Lily goes missing.
I am a little exercise obsessed, I walk early in the morning around the woods behind our house with our Great Dane, I run regularly, too, and I have a small home gym where I lift weights. It is the woods that features significantly in The Other Boy, shadowy and unforgiving after dark, secretive and isolated near the shack, a place to get lost, a place of escape, a place to hide, and somewhere to find out who you truly are.
The forest I spend a lot of my life in has log piles that appear and disappear throughout the year, some consist of freshly cut logs with thick trunks, others have logs that are thin and mossy, there are signs warning of danger should the logs roll and a person get caught beneath them. As I walked or ran around the woods whilst writing The Other Boy, I played out many of the scenes in my head, imagining Mason alone and afraid in the darkness, sweet Lily trapped and lost, how Jamie must have felt when he was first taken to Gunner’s shack.
We have built many dens with our youngest son from the fallen trees and branches scattered around our lonely woods, finding logs to use as seats, leafy ferns for cover and decoration. As a child, a large part of growing up involved being outside, walking our dog through the woods around our local pond, snaking along the sandy paths of the nearby common. For me, the outdoors holds fond and fun memories, but for the characters in The Other Boy the woods become sinister and dangerous.
When I am done with my morning walk and gym session, and I have bustled our last child off to school, the other four now at college or out at work, I come home to an empty house and write at my yellow Mac, using my yellow keyboard, in my office with bright orange walls. I find it funny that I love bright, happy colours, fun eighties music, and yet my stories are dark, twisty, heartbreaking thrillers. I am not an angry or brooding individual, I love to talk, and if everyone around me is happy, so am I.
Yet, whilst studying for my master’s degree in creative writing, I discovered my love of writing thrillers, putting ordinary, relatable people into terrible situations and watching them fight for their lives and their sanity, pushing the physical and mental limits of people like you and me.
The world goes by outside the window of my office, which looks out to the quiet road that leads to the woods. Neighbours pass by to walk their dogs, to jog, or cycle, or play with their children in the forest, and I wonder if that is all they are doing, or if they will also be hiding secrets, succumbing to an inner darkness, or facing their fears among the dense trunks, moaning canopy and murky undergrowth of the woodland beyond our tranquil country road…
The forest has now taken on a new meaning in my world, inspiration for my books.