Hello -

Autumn is here, and whatever’s going on in your life, I hope you’re managing to experience the changing trees in some way or other - whether it’s in your local woods or from a train, or simply a solitary tree in a car park. They’re all trees and they’re good for the spirit. (However I do wish we could have some rain. The ponds on the Common where I live are drying up fast, which means poor hunting for my local heron.)

So Rainforest is finally published, and I’m looking forward to meeting some of you at the events I’ll be doing over the coming weeks. (If you can’t make it, but would still like me to sign your copy of Rainforest, why not forward your receipt as proof of purchase to Holly.Wilson@orionbooks.co.uk and she’ll send you one of the bookplates I’ve signed).

A reader recently asked me how it feels to do events. It’s a good question, and the answer is that it feels like being two completely different people. There’s the outgoing me who thoroughly enjoys meeting readers (because you always surprise me), and then there’s the solitary one who just wants to stay home and write. But I should add that even when I’m being the “public” me, the book I’m working on is always at the back of my mind; and right now, what with all the marketing stuff from the publishers (sorry if you’ve felt bombarded by newsletters), my poor book-in-progress is beginning to feel neglected. It’s like a crying child: rather hard to ignore!

Another reader asked if I get frightened when I’m writing my supernatural stories, and the answer is yes and no, because when I’m writing, I’m flipping between two different states of mind. Sometimes I’m the all-controlling author, keeping a watchful eye on technical stuff like pacing, and how to keep the reader turning the page (it’s like being an eagle, looking down from on high). But most of the time I’m on the ground with my characters, feeling what they feel – and if that’s fear, then I’m feeling it too. For me that’s the best part of writing, because it’s when unplanned, unexpected things emerge from my unconscious, and often they end up being the most frightening parts of the story. Take Dark Matter. I knew there’d be a bear post in the story, but it wasn’t until I was deep into the writing and trapped in the cabin with Jack, that I realised quite how important and how frightening it would become.

You’d have thought that writing a story in a haunted location would help make it frightening, but I haven’t found that it makes much difference; perhaps that’s because I’m not psychically sensitive. For instance, the Wolf Brother books have their share of scary passages, and when I was writing them I used to take refuge from looming deadlines in an isolated cottage in Kent. It stood at the foot of a Bronze Age burial mound, on the site of a medieval village where everyone had died during the Black Death; and not surprisingly, it was supposed to be haunted. But although it was wonderfully peaceful and quite eerie at night, I was far too focussed on Torak, Renn and Wolf to notice!

On which note, I’ll say goodbye until the next time – which will be in a few weeks, when I might talk about my favourite classic ghost stories. I hope you’re in a place both mentally and physically where you can enjoy some beautiful autumn trees. Stay steady - and happy reading!

Michelle

P.S. Rainforest and the birthday edition of Dark Matter are out now, and The Witching Hour has just been published on 16^th October. You can order them on my website, where you can also send me a message: just go to my website and click on AMA.

P.P.S. Here’s a picture of my much-loved balsa-wood macaw. I picked him up in Ecuador nearly thirty years ago, and he helped me write Rainforest. I love the fact that he was once a tree in the Amazonian rainforest.