So, when I finally started writing much later in my 20’s, that was what came out. This is the architecture for the cage that contains this feeling. And I think that spoke to me really powerfully of the sort deep and profound nature for that kind of writing. And I thought, well, this is where you put this. Jacobs and I got that feeling again, that cold feeling. And I remember reading one of my first uncanny stories when I was 18 or so, The Monkey’s Paw, by W.W. You can feel all sorts of terrible things, but that cold hand around your heart is different. I don’t think people feel fear like that normally in their lives and in the waking, daylight world. But the main thing I took away from it was the abject terror. It just seemed to be part of that strangeness. Probably because I think it didn’t seem any weirder than any of the other strange aspects of growing up. But at the time, as far as I was concerned, it was a ghost, and I slept on the floor of my sister’s room for probably four years. By the time I was in my 20s, I could identify what it had been. It was probably the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me, before or since. And I could feel every finger on this hand-every individual finger––where it was touching me. When I was about 13, I started waking up in the middle of the night with a hand on the small of my back, pushing me very firmly out of bed. And every summer, we went back to this house on Dartmoor, which is really rugged and wild and quite spooky. But I grew up in the U.S., Kenya, Yemen, and Madagascar, so a lot of moving around. You don’t realize what parts of yourself you’re using until suddenly you recognize parts of your life in a book. The one thing that triggered my interest, and interestingly, it’s like so much of writing, it all happens off stage.

And instead of having the typical bottom-drawer novel that most writers have, where they hone their skills and put it away, I wrote The Girl From Rawblood again and again and again for seven years. It’s a bit of a funny story because I started writing in my late 20s.

Catriona ward rawblood