"Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews was based on a real story, and my novels are based on real-life experiences and places twisted slightly in order to let in the terror.

"I have lived and farmed in bleak moorland hamlets surrounded by weird folks who never go anywhere. In my childhood, I survived reform schools and locked hospital wards. I know what fear and helplessness feel like. I know what it's like when people don't listen.

"It only takes a small turn to change normality into horror, and this is what I do. There are still many places in the world hidden from general view. There are no monsters here, no aliens, no incubi, merely dysfunctional human beings, darkness, and disorder.

"It is out of everyday situations that I think real horror comes, amidst families, friends, partners, in chintzy living rooms behind net curtains where nobody goes and nobody sees. And then there are those forgotten places where time itself has stood still. And if this is so in minuscule Britain, how much more must this apply to the USA in all its vastness?

"Like Flowers in the Attic, Unhallowed Ground is about people in situations they cannot control in seemingly ordinary circumstances and the way fear escalates and threatens the sanity of the sanest among us. How frail our sanity really is. And how untested. That's what I find really scary".