The locations of the serial murders in the novel were chosen randomly by me at first. It was only after I started looking at a map of Newport that I noticed the places I had chosen were related to each other, as described in the book.
And so the remaining murders - probably 3 or 4 - were chosen deliberately to fit this new pattern. But yes, to those who have asked me, 5 or 6 of the sites were plucked from the air (the air inside my brain, that is) without knowing they would line up.
When I began writing the novel, there was no grand plan; as usual with my writing, there is an element (if not a whole bag of them) of the words writing themselves. This might lead at some point to me drafting a rough outline plan of the story, but it's likely to be very loose and indeterminate.
Perhaps this comes from my interest, as a teenager, in Surrealism and 'automatic writing'?
So anyway, I wrote this novel as I went along, usually with little or no idea what would happen next. I like this method, and it suits me. I can pick up threads, change direction and include new research and interests as and when they arise. A bit like web surfing: one place leads you to another, which in turns leads...
Once I knew that the murders had been committed (?) according to 'ley lines' in the city, I knew exactly what I needed to do. What direction to take it in if I was ever in control of the flow of words, and I also knew from that what sort of character the killer was.
The ending was a complete surprise to me. Written almost manically over a week or so, listening to the same songs and pieces of music on repeat, this was certainly a case of me just being there to physically type the words as they flowed through my fingers to the keyboard.
I will post here later which music it actually was that drove me to the conclusion of the novel. But the Cocteau Twins were a large part of the engine.
