WHERE THE IDEA FOR COURIER CAME FROM

I had the idea for Courier when a courier delivered a package to me and was wearing a black beanie hat and dark reflective glasses. I could hardly see his face, and it got me thinking how we know so little about couriers – who they are, what their background is, etc – yet when they deliver to us, they know our full names and where we live, and with that information, they could penetrate our lives. This paranoid thought lingered in my mind and eventually led me to imagine the character of Bob, the creepy courier who is the protagonist of my novella.

BOOKS THAT INSPIRED COURIER

While the idea of a stalker courier percolated in my mind, I re-read You by Caroline Kepnes - the writing style of which I adore - and I also discovered Damage by Josephine Hart, which is a brilliant story of yearning and obsession. These books, and a few others, inspired Courier (see my inspiration section below!).

THE PROCESS OF WRITING COURIER

I initially wrote about five thousand words of the story, but it wasn’t really flowing, and I thought the idea was too dark and the tone a bit grim, so I put the book aside. Then winter came, and rainy overcast days lent themselves better to the feel of the book so I revisited the idea. The story had been brewing in my mind all year, and I started writing again. This time, it all came together perfectly, and I finished the novella in three weeks. I had a real sense of the main character, Bob, and it was like he was speaking through me. I had a lot of fun writing about someone unashamedly weird and unhinged.

GETTING A FEEL FOR BOB

At the time that I had the idea for Courier, I was living in Wales, and I’d been getting quite into new age spirituality. I went to a lot of quirky events, such as chakra-aligning ceremonies and getting in touch with your feminine goddess workshops. I met a lot of spiritual people, some more grounded than others. I realised that some spiritual ideas can cloud a person’s thinking and lead them to lose touch with reality a bit. I liked the idea of incorporating this into Bob. He sees himself as an enlightened hippy and has essentially created his own moral code, completely divorced from reality. I had fun playing around with new age ideas in Courier, and I really enjoyed the idea of a psychotic, murderous hippy.

WHERE TO SET COURIER

I couldn’t decide at first where to set Courier. Most of my books are set in London, which is where I lived for most of my adult life, but London didn’t feel right for this book. I wanted to set it somewhere smaller, somewhere a little claustrophobic. I spent the summer of 2020 in Hastings, during Covid, and really loved the place. It felt perfect for the story. It has a strange atmosphere as Hastings is very poor, but it’s also popular with artists and creatives, and people who want to turn it into the new Brighton. So it has a creative energy to it, while also having a bit of an edge. It felt right for Bob. Bob is a lost soul, a seeker, a misfit.