I particularly remember an abridged version of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman In White which had us all on the edge of our seats. Also, when I was ten years old, I had a marvellous teacher, Miss Dmitrov, who read us lots of different kinds of stories. She would come with me to the public library and help me choose an armful of books, and often she would read what I was reading, so we could talk about it. Looking back at my childhood, I can see that it helped enormously that our house was full of books, and that my mother read a lot. Was there any family member or friend who particularly encouraged you to go down this path? When I was older, I loved (and still do) many of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century writers: Henry James, Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. When I was a child, I was particularly inspired by Roger Lancelyn Green’s marvellous re-tellings of myths and legends – Greek, Egyptian, Norse, to name but a few. Maybe I do it for the same reason that I did when I was five: because I like creating imaginary worlds, which can sometimes feel more real than the real one.Īre there any particular authors who inspired you, both to take up writing and more recently?Īll writers read a lot, and I‘m no exception. It can be quite hard to say precisely why one does it. I can’t say that anything in particular “inspired” me to write. But I never thought I could “be an author” – that is, earn my living by writing, until much later, when I was in my thirties. All through school, I wrote stories, and I kept writing when I grew up. I remember enjoying making up a world and escaping into it. I wrote one of my first, Ebany The Mouse Goddess, when I was five, on my mother’s typewriter. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t like writing stories. What inspired you to take up writing as a career?

Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed by Dark Matter. This interview was conducted via email so is text only.

Michelle paver ghost stories