Some of my recent oblique research has involved: coloratura sopranos, lichens, and Scheele’s Green: the story of arsenic-laced wallpaper and the most gorgeous colour ever to exist.

Like the experience of being on a psychedelic trip, whether you perceive bliss or horror is down to your state of mind.

Weird landscapes tell us so much about making the hidden aspects of life visible, and, about our interconnectedness with the natural world. But, I think there is another aspect that can be important to all writers: they can help us to create BIG MOOD.

When you have been inhabiting a world so deeply, it can feel like a loss to turn it into something that other people can perceive. In some ways, the more fully-realised your imaginative space, the more difficult to let go of your vision.

I was an adult when I learned to swim, and I think that is why water is troubling and desirable to me, and why it appears in so many of my dreams and visions.

I don’t know about you but I love stories set in haunted houses because they offer a closed set, a liminal zone for transformation to occur, and mysteries to be explored but not necessarily resolved. And because they remind me of dreaming.