All of my novels are concerned, to some extent, with the paranormal. I’m not entirely sure why. It might be the result of my Roman Catholic upbringing; or my two years in a traditional village in Botswana, where the dead were buried beneath the mud floors of the houses (including mine) and ancestor spirits were a part of everyday life.
My first novel, The Children Who Sleep By The River, is based on my research with a nganga (traditional midwife) in Zimbabwe, who became possessed by the spirit of her great aunt when she was attending a difficult birth. In my next, The Fourth Queen, there is an important subplot involving hexes and curses. In Hungry Ghosts the clue is in the title – it’s about the debt the living owe to the dead. And by now you might have worked out that Herring Girl is all about reincarnation.
But I am a scientist too, with a doctorate in neuropsychology, so I approach all of these spiritual themes with a scientific perspective as well as a writerly one – which I hope explains why I’ve added parapsychology to my website.
I’ll be posting summaries of recent relevant research findings here as I encounter them, along with information about new (and occasionally old) books on the topic that I’ve found interesting – including a list of books about reincarnation that I consulted during my research for Herring Girl.
Photo credit: Zolotarevs/Shutterstock