My Inspiration

When I was a freckle-faced schoolgirl, I loved to write stories. I literally lived in my imagination, a world where anything could happen and I could be exactly who I wanted to be without worrying about social constraints. I loved writing more than I loved reading. These days, the two are on a par – add to that my morbid fascination with serial killers, the human psyche and all things  supernatural and I think I have found my niche – or as I like to think of it – my Happy Place.   

But it wasn’t quite so quick and simple; several factors combined to make me into the story-teller I am today and I’m sure there will be many more to help me evolve and practise my craft along the way. For my first blog post, I’d like to tell you about one of my biggest inspirations, also a favourite controversial topic:

RELIGION

When my schooling began, I was thrust into the dark world of Catholicism. I was sixteen when I met my first atheist, a person I found captivating. Despite now being agnostic, I have to acknowledge the fact that my childhood religion had a huge part to play in the shaping of my character and my interests. Now, I am not particularly averse to religion; in fact, I find the multitude of beliefs in the world to be fascinating. I’m lucky that my day job allows me to talk to people from all over the world and one of my favourite subjects to discuss – if they are open to it, of course – is religion. But its practice is not for me. Live it, believe in it if it brings you peace, but being a catholic had a particular effect on me as a child, notably the guilt. Oh God, the guilt for everything I did, said and even thought; I was once told by a primary school teacher that thinking of killing someone was just the same as doing it. For a class of eight-year-old kids who were preached to about hell every day, that’s a pretty hard-hitting comment. It was almost as if we were destined for hell from birth and the only things that could save us from it came in the form of constant prayer, worship and asking for forgiveness.

Saturday afternoons were spent avoiding food (because you had to take communion on an empty stomach) and donning my best outfit to attend mass. Our priest, an impatient alcoholic, had apparently decided that Sunday mass was just too much to bear with a hangover; my memory tells me that the change of day for the weekly ritual was put to a congregational vote, but I’m pretty sure the priest would have made it swing in his favour either way. We then spent forty-five minutes listening to a sermon, praying and singing hymns, queueing for communion and watching the donation basket be passed around. Of course, if you had missed a mass or two previously, you couldn’t take communion until you had visited the priest in the confessional. Ah, this was by far my least favourite activity, just me and the angry Irishman in a box, listing all of my sins so he could dole out twelve Hail Marys and five renditions of The Lord’s Prayer. At the end of confession, I would kneel in a pew and carry out my punishment – I mean, penance – until my soul was cleansed and I was allowed to line up for the edible circular paper, which was actually something to look forward to when you hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. 

Aside from the weekly church outing, school R.E lessons were obligatory. We studied parts of the Bible – something I quite enjoyed, since I got to draw renditions of miracles and parables, but the teachers always seemed to be religious nuts, preaching to us about morals and how sin was a one-way ticket to hell, a place filled with eternal torture and pain. If that doesn’t mess up your teenage head, nothing will. I felt like life was an ongoing battle between good and evil, that the devil and his minions were just outside the window, waiting to drag my juicy, innocent soul to the pits of fire and damnation. Not to mention that when my Grandma died, I felt it my duty to pray as hard as I could every night, so that her soul would not be stuck in purgatory forever. Talk about a big responsibility for small shoulders.

So, there you have it. Most of my stories have an element of religion in them; I mean, can you even tell tales of the supernatural without talking about it? The story of angels versus demons is as old as humanity itself and the deeper you go, the darker it gets. It’s enthralling and terrifying in equal measures and I have lost many a night’s sleep counting my sins and wondering where I sit on the celestial tally. Death is the only thing that is certain in life and being unsure of your score is unnerving; at least, for those of us who have morals in the first place. I mean, did Ted Bundy care if he was going to heaven or hell? Probably not. Do I think he is in hell? No, I don’t. I don’t actually believe in hell at all – I don’t even capitalise the word – but the idea of it is something that has stayed with me since childhood and will continue to appear in my books. After all, I already spent my formative years researching the subject; it is as much a part of my history as all the other experiences that made me… well, me.