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.

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.

Brighton Rock is intense to say the least. It may be a classic race against time thriller, but it’s also a strange, heady mix of poverty-sticken provincialism and the potential damnation of one’s eternal soul.

‘Write what you know’ is said for a reason, even if people often take it too literally. In Coldharbour, I have written what I know, even though I don’t regularly raise the Dead or have brought a house down around me with a click of my fingers.

Why is Rebecca one of my favourite books? Well, the big twist holds up every time I read it, the protagonist’s anxieties become mine, and the atmosphere at Manderley is a heady mix of claustrophobia and lushness.