Neil McGowan

I grew up in a small town in the North of England. There wasn't too much to do there, so I read. A lot. Mainly horror, but anything I could get my hands on. I started writing when I was about eight, after reading a story that I didn't enjoy- I thought I could do a lot better, and decided then that I was going to write a book. Over the years, I discovered that whilst writing was easy, good writing took lots of practise. By the time I realised just how hard it was to write a good story that people would want to read, I was hooked on the whole creative process

I'd wanted to write a vampire novel for years, but didn't want to write yet another clone of Twilight. I wanted to take the concept of vampires back to a less polished creature, take out most of the glamour and return to the original roots of vampirism. That said, I wanted to use a contemporary setting, so I spent a while trying to find the right angle. I finally hit upon the idea of making my vampires the result of a bio-genetic accident. It allowed me to explore the inherent inhumanity of vampirism by setting a disparate group of individuals against them against the backdrop of a small town - the way the characters had to band together despite their differences, and the effect it had upon the town.