Andrew Michael Hurley: how the north made The Loney a gothic horror

The 2015 Costa first book winner shares the language of pikes, haggs and landmarks in England’s north that inspired his novel

One of the joys (and frustrations) of writing a novel is that what you set out to do isn’t always what you end up doing. It wasn’t my intention to necessarily write a gothic horror and since the publication of The Loney I’ve been asking myself how it became one. As far as I can make out, the answer lies in the landscape that first inspired me.

Silverdale lies about a third of the way around the curve of Morecambe Bay, and like many places in that area, it changes constantly at the whim of the tide. The sea can be a mile out across the mudflats or it can brim against the inland flood defences. A channel here today might be gone tomorrow. Such is the strength of the water that it can leave behind great piles of heaved-up stone shaped to its swell. It’s a dangerous place. The weather quickly turns. Distances are hard to judge. It’s easy to walk out just a little too far on to the sands and hear them shifting and sucking around you as if the whole place might collapse at any moment.

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