You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

I think pressure can be an incentive toward improvement, and while I'm not denying that I feel some, I will also stress that it is self-inflicted and hopefully can be channeled in a healthy way.

Adam Nevill a spine-chiller in the classic tradition, a writer who draws you in from the world of the familiar, eases you into the world of terror, and then locks the door behind you. The House of Small Shadows grows darker and takes on more menacing life with each step forward.

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.

I'd worked at a small town newspaper, and I was thinking of all the strange stories that I had seen float through the newsroom in my time there that were dismissed as kind of amusing curiosities. Somehow from that I got to this idea of an eccentric alcoholic who built a lighthouse in the woods.

I've never really found inspiration for story ideas in the news, but I'd say it certainly affects our lives in so many ways. I would say that certainly the stories of the day appear in the work - I just have never gone so far as to say, well, this particular event could influence a plot of an entire book.

What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.