1 March 2021
When I first met my agent 10 years ago, I told her about a book I wanted to write about a lighthouse. I had the set-up in mind - a mystery based on the real-life vanishing of three keepers from the Flannan Isles in 1900 - but hadn't worked out yet how to tell it, if I even had it in me to write a novel, or if what I wrote would be any good. Nine books and three pseudonyms later, I finally had the confidence to commit to the story: confidence in myself, in my research, and that I could do justice to a fascinating, now extinct, way of life.