While Jim Steinman might be the more overt musical influence on Coldharbour, Stevie Nicks really can’t be discounted, as her lightly Gothic combination of rawness and femininity with that dash of mysticism appears in Coldharbour.

Why are we so nostalgic for the Nineties? Well, I’m a Millennial so I have a pretty good memory of the mid-Nineties onwards and I have some theories as to why this particular decade is so ‘in’ right now.

When I originally planned this blog, I was simply thinking of women writers who have influenced me and whom I haven’t already written about. However, once I really looked at my list, I realised that all five are best-known for their Gothic work.

Why are we so fascinated by haunted houses? They crop up again and again in pop culture and I feel like it’s one of the first spooky things we discover as children. Most episodes of Scooby-Doo have some form of haunted house going on, after all.

I haven’t had a Netflix account for at least a year, but when I (briefly) reactivate it this winter, I’ll be paying a visit to some old favourites, because if there’s one shining light in Netflix’s library, it’s the horror series.

Full disclosure: I’ve studied much more poetry (reading and writing) than prose. But I always knew that the story of the Wildes was a story in prose, so I’d just have to spend years learning how to write a good book. In the most poetic way I could.

With my love for a good old British beach, it’s no wonder that my fictional setting Coldharbour is a seaside town. In alphabetical order, here are my top ten personal favourite seaside towns across the UK and Ireland.

I’m often asked about my influences when it comes to writing and obviously, I have many literary ones. But really, it all comes back to the legenday Jim Steinman. If you don't go over the top, you can't see what's on the other side…

Did you know that Halloween isn’t an American invention? It actually began in Britain and Ireland as Samhain, an ancient Celtic festival that heralded the beginning of winter and the ‘darker half’ of the year.

Most of my favourite Black writers are predominantly poets and their voices are as diverse, compelling, and fascinating as you’ll find in any canon of poetry. So, here are five Black poets whose work really speaks to me.

The Master and Margarita had been on my radar for a long time as someone who loves stories about witches and the Devil.

In Irish storytelling traditions, the supernatural is entwined with the natural world (including the various traumas inflicted on the land, from invasion to famine). Here are three of my favourite stories.

Marathon Man perfectly captures the 1970s Jewish experience as my father described it: a generation away from the Holocaust, but Nazis were still being brought to justice. In other words, the trauma was generational and very much had not been forgotten.

There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

The Ashkenazim have a long and dark history combined with living in Central and Eastern Europe. This has led to a rich folklore full of forests, doppelgangers, and questions over the complexity of a human soul.

Discovering the modernist and postmodernist scene was a game-changer for me: all those evocative images captured in as few words as possible. And often, these poets were just a little bit Queer.

There’s no reason why fanfiction can’t be seen as an amazing training ground for writers – and there’s also absolutely no shame in ‘only’ ever writing (or reading) fanfiction, whatever anyone tries to tell you.

Is witchcraft inherently feminist? Is the relationship even a good thing? And what does it mean nowadays to be a witch? Let’s look at the past, the present, and the personal, with reference to one of my favourite books.