So anyway, we'll get into all that.

But it's sort of that's reflective of what I like and value in books or reading as an experience.

I think you've got a responsibility as a writer to hold a reader's attention.

and not talk down to them.

I think a lot of literature does sort of talk down to people.

And it makes what I think is the cardinal sin, which is assuming that the audience is less bright than they are, which I hate.

I really dislike that enormously when I read that, you know, when you're being like, especially with things where you have to put a twist in.

I'm so curious when you begin to put all this together in terms of your outlining and then you creating this cast of characters talk about that experience for me because you have this this group of kids who are so varied and they've never feel like sometimes you'll feel like people are plotted in as a device right to to kind of execute something and it doesn't feel like that in here but i'm so curious about how you started to evolve these different characters or how you approached it

... can I ask you to give us the bare bones of the story?

I can give you the bare bones of the story.

The story is set in the early '90s.

It's set in the summer of 1993, and we follow an undergraduate called Alex, and he, for various reasons, which may or may not be relevant, cannot go home over the summer term, uh, the summer holidays between summer term and autumn term.

So he's just stuck in his university town, uh, without any direction.

And the university throws him a lifeline to, uh, join a team clearing out a Victorian lunatic asylum, and in the grounds of that, there's a Victorian mansion that's extremely dilapidated called Solace House.

Uh, cleaning out the, the hospital doesn't take very long, but then the university secures, uh, the purchase of Solace House, the eponymous Victorian mansion, and they begin to peel back the layers of this house, which was inhabited by a hoarder called Edwin Flane.

Simply put, man, how the fuck did you do that?