Posts by Peter
Night Voyage to Spitsbergen
A few years ago, I spent a fortnight traveling by ship around the entire Spitsbergen archipelago, and although I wasn’t then thinking about ghosts, I was so struck by the beauty and the desolation that I knew I would at some stage write a story about it. My first trip was in summer, at the…
Read MoreCreating A Stone Age Universe
The land is one vast Forest, peopled by small clans of hunter-gatherers. They have no writing, no metals, and no wheel. They don’t need them. They’re superb survivors. They know every tree and herb in the Forest. They know how to make beautiful, deadly weapons from flint and bone. They know the animals they hunt…
Read MoreTen Things You Didn’t Know About Torak’s World
Each clan believes that it is descended from its clan-creature. This is why, in OUTCAST, when Renn thanks the ravens Rip and Rek for helping Torak, she addresses them as “little grandfathers”. (At this point, of course, Renn doesn’t yet know that Rek is female.) Wolf loves lingonberries because his creator does. Lingonberries are sweet…
Read MoreResearching Wolf Brother
I want the reader to feel that they’re right there with Torak and Wolf. And that means research. However, it’s vital not to include too much in the stories, so I’m careful only to put in a tiny part of what I’ve learned: maybe as little as 1%. The challenge is to put in just…
Read MoreThe Wolf Inside Me
Since I was a child, I’ve read everything I could find about wolves, and the wolf talk which Torak uses is as close as I can get to real wolf talk. For example, when he asks Wolf to play, or muzzle-grabs him when he’s a cub, that’s how a real wolf might invite play, or…
Read MoreA Swim In The Fjord With Killer Whales
To get ideas for what the Seal Islands might be like, I went to the Lofoten Islands of north Norway, and stayed in a rorbu (a fisherman’s hut built on stilts over the water). I was there at the time of the midnight sun (when the story takes place), and spent several days roaming the…
Read MoreKiller Whales, Gutskin, And Seal Meat
When I was writing Spirit Walker, I needed to immerse myself in Torak’s world. So I went there. To experience the Seal Islands, I travelled to the Lofoten islands of north-west Norway. Like Torak, I went at Midsummer, which is a very strange time in the north, because it doesn’t get dark. I found it…
Read MoreResearching Soul Eater
For research, I spent time in north-east Greenland in winter, where I experienced at first hand the power of wind and snow, watched glaciers calving and icebergs crashing into each other, and took several husky sled trips Greenland-style (racing as fast as the dogs could go over hills, frozen lakes, anything in their path). To…
Read MoreEncounters With Ice Bears
The Inuit name for the polar bear is Nanuq: the most feared and respected of all Arctic creatures. And no wonder. The polar bear is the largest land predator in the world, and an incredibly skilled hunter, equally at home on ice, mountain, or in the sea. And unlike the grizzly or black bear, which…
Read MoreResearching Outcast
In Outcast, much of the story takes place in or around Lake Axehead, so I needed a large lake. Where better than Sweden, which has about a hundred thousand lakes to choose from? To get ideas for Lake Axehead, I went to Lake Storsjon in northern Sweden, where I got inspiration for the eerie reedbeds…
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