I played myself in a 2019 horror movie. Back in the mists of time, I spent the 90s as a rock journalist, who jetted around the planet interviewing people who made loud music. Around the middle of that decade, I interviewed several extreme metal musicians in Norway, who ended up becoming embroiled in church-burnings and even murder. Cut to 2016, when I was invited to play myself in Lords Of Chaos, a movie based on that whole sorry affair. It was deeply surreal to find myself in Budapest, in an on-set recreation of the Kerrang! magazine office in which I once worked, doing a phone interview with Rory Culkin, brother of Home Alone’s Macaulay. Having had no prior experience as an actor, I hated my performance, until I saw the film in a cinema and no-one laughed when I came on. Phew.
Ghoster
I have a weird relationship with technology. My new novel Ghoster is about a paramedic called Kate Collins, who has a whirlwind Tinder romance, only for her boyfriend Scott to ‘ghost’ her on the eve of her moving into his flat. When she arrives at his place, all his possessions have disappeared… except for his phone. Should she unlock this device to find out the truth about Scott? Ghoster deals a lot with digital dependency, which might make readers think I’m preaching against tech and the online world, but one look at my various social media accounts and YouTube channel will tell you that this isn’t the case. I love tech and spend a great deal of time online… but at the same time I do worry about what the internet has already done to our brains and what it may still do. Besides, when you’re writing a scary novel, the positive sides of tech are really of no use to you!
I love putting real places in my books. Because I’ve now lived in Brighton for a whole decade, it felt so natural to make Brighton the main setting of my new novel Ghoster. And as well as including obvious landmarks (such as the Palace Pier, which my lead character Kate Collins breaks into in the dead of night), I also wanted to include lesser-known places, such as bars. So Kate also visits pubs like The Basketmakers, where vintage tins decorate the wall, containing handwritten messages from patrons. Not to mention the Hope And Ruin, a fully vegan pub that serves vegan kebabs called Beelzebabs! I like the idea of readers thinking I’ve created these places myself, only to discover that they can actually visit them.
I’m told I write strong female characters. I’m always so pleased when readers and reviewers say this. I do, however, find it a little confusing when people ask how I go about writing female characters. The question itself kind of suggests that women are some whole other species, when – shock, horror – people are just people. Incidentally, my own definition of ‘strong female character’ doesn’t necessarily mean they’re literally strong, physically or mentally, like Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies – it means they feel real. For me, characters feeling real, and maybe relatable, is what feels most important.
I’ve only just binge-watched Peaky Blinders. Yes, I know, I’m ridiculous. For years, people have been singing the show’s praises, but for some reason I often have to be dragged kicking and screaming into period dramas. This, despite the fact that one of my all-time favourite movies is Goodfellas. Anyway, I mainlined all five series over the last month and this show has instantly become one of my all-time TV favourites, alongside the likes of Doctor Who, Spooks and The Shield. I often feel like drama is at its most gripping when the central character is unknowable in some way, and Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) most certainly fits that bill.
I once had a cameo in Doctor Who. Yes, back in 2008 I was on the set of the Who story The Sontaran Strategem, covering the production process as a journalist for Doctor Who Magazine. For some reason, they were short of extras and so I volunteered to play a warehouse worker being held at gunpoint by a solider in the back of a shot. They shaved my beard off for the part, which felt odd, but it was exciting to appear in this TV institution I had loved since I was four years old. My mind was so blown, in fact, that I later got on the wrong train at Cardiff and ended up in Swansea instead of London!
I spoke to a real paramedic for research on Ghoster. Early on, I decided that my main character Kate Collins should be an ambulance worker. This was partly because characters who do jobs that help others are instantly sympathetic, but also because I wanted her to have a job that could go badly wrong if she went on some kind of personal decline… such as becoming obsessed with her mysteriously-vanished boyfriend’s phone. Having decided that, I then felt the weight of all the research I’d need to do, to make Kate’s voice authentic! Argh. Thankfully, I found Victoria, an amazing friend-of-a-friend, who was able to tell me all the great ambulance stories I needed. Including one about a deranged, naked patient who climbed on top of an ambulance. And oh yes, I’ve dramatised that torrid tale in Ghoster!