A Thin Place: Carole Johnstone on Moving to Scotland’s Outer Hebrides ‹ CrimeReads

My mid-life crisis - or ours, because I roped my husband, Iain, in too - was deciding to sell our house, take an extended break from work, and blow what little savings we had on deciding what to do next. For six months, we lived in Cyprus, and I started writing what would become my first novel, Mirrorland. And then, because we'd rarely been home more than a few weeks a year, we returned to Scotland. We chose the Isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides because we'd visited there before, and I'd fantasised about writing a novel on a deserted Atlantic clifftop every bit as much as on a Greek island. We stayed all over Lewis and Harris during the seven months we lived there, but spent the autumn in the aptly-named Cliff, a small settlement on the Valtos peninsula on the rugged and remote west coast of Lewis.

At first, it was nothing short of idyllic. I finished writing Mirrorland with that view of the Atlantic and a never-ending succession of surfers in camper vans...