"No, again I sort of stumbled along. I was writing form the perspective of James Stack initially – I had tried writing it from the mother’s point of view, but it didn’t work. So I was halfway through the novel with James Stack, when I discovered the story of the ghost of John Finnegan, and I started looking into that. Then I went to the site and found the old cottage and got talking to an elderly neighbour who had lived there forever, and he was telling me about the ghost, and as the house was abandoned for two years the neighbours would dare it each other to stay overnight to see if the ghost appeared. And this elderly gentleman had done it himself, but he said ‘it was all hoo-ha, he didn’t appear.’ But I kind of felt something while I was there – I really felt this connection to the little boy – it really intrigued me why he was still there. And so I went home and I left the second half of James behind and I wrote John’s section all in one go, and then wove it throughout the story. John became the hero from there. So it was all sort of piecemeal, it all came together as I discovered things."
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Once you had made the discovery of the murders, did you have a plan for how you would write about them?
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Rosetta Allan
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