And so, readers, we have reached the final book spotlight. The House at Kirtlebeck End is my most recent novel, published in 2019.

The House at Kirtlebeck End is a dual narrative story which moves between the 1970s and present day as a young woman, Harry, and her grandmother, Eleanor, tell their respective stories. At the centre of the tale is an old house, filled with secrets and a murky family history which begs to be uncovered. In terms of genre, the book is undoubtedly a paranormal mystery and a ghost story, and is probably the spookiest thing I have written to date!

Weaving a story across two different timelines and from two different characters’ point of view was quite a challenge. I began by writing both narratives in turn, following the structure of the book. However, about a third of the way in, I found it more productive to focus on one character’s story at a time, completing one before returning to the other. I wrote Eleanor’s story, set in 1972, first; this made most sense to me as this timeline was the pivot upon which Harry’s various discoveries hung while she tried to solve her family’s mysteries. Nonetheless it was tricky to ensure that things came together, that the pacing was correct and that the chapters fell into the right order. A large part of the editing was a painstaking process of ensuring that it made sense, and that nothing was discovered by Harry before being revealed to the reader by Eleanor.

The story itself was inspired by a Christmas holiday spent in southern Scotland a few years ago. We stayed in a big old Victorian house in a tiny village in the countryside. It was a truly beautiful place, not at all forbidding like the house at Kirtlebeck End. Nonetheless, it was full of interesting features, from the sweeping wooden staircase, to the antique iron towel rail in the bathroom. It got me thinking about the things that the house would have seen over the years, and the stories it held within its walls. I found myself wondering what the house might tell me, if it could speak. The idea stayed with me, and developed eventually into this ghostly tale which takes place in an old house, sitting alone at the end of a fictional village I named Kirtlebeck. Given my love of the Gothic, it’s little wonder things ended up this way!