|
The main inspiration for Island Life came from Lovecraft's Deep Old Ones. Like some people are with spiders or creepy-crawlies, I am with pale things that lurk beneath. It stems from childhood nightmares and a mixture of Morlocks, Tolkein's goblins, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and HPL. Those all got mashed up in my mind and led to the creatures that rampage on a Hebridean island. "Island Life" seemed appropriate, in that it can refer both to the people who live and work there, and the monsters that are after them.
Quite often it’s hard to remember exactly where a tale came from, but with Island Life it is easy. It started in October 1988, on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. We were there for Tim Stevenson’s birthday, and we rented a lighthouse that was now a self-catering establishment.
We drank a lot of beer and sat up in the old light room well into the night. On the way down we scared ourselves stupid when we encountered the screaming banshee that inhabited the building. In the morning I discovered a burial mound outside, and a local legend of a nine-foot skeleton found there.
And that was that, for several years. I only started writing seriously three years later. I was struggling for an idea one day and looked through some photographs. There it was - a burial mound, with a lighthouse in the background. I had a “What if?” moment, and the novel was born.
|