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I was the person who stayed awake reading by the nightlight until the scary shadows made me crazy.

I liked lots of 'Doctor Who' books, but my favourite tale was a spooky story about two invalid children - who've never met in the real world - who get trapped in a shared dreamscape when they fall asleep. It's called 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr.

I've wanted to write a ghost story for years, and my main aim was to write the most frightening ghost story that I could think of.

Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories.

I have always been a pretty big fan of ghost stories.

I think books that are meant to be read in the nighttime ought to confront the very fears that we're trying to think about.

I think that being read to every night is the reason why I was plowing through volume after volume of 'Nancy Drew' books all by myself by the time I reached the first grade. I loved stories. I loved the escape. I had a vivid imagination.

I was reading my son some fables; it made for good nighttime reading. These stories were very vivid and very strange and occasionally bizarrely violent. It was a very free landscape.

As a child I loved ghost stories.

I loved all ghost stories. So I guess it was only a matter of time before I wrote one.