I love owls, and I try and include them where I can. They’ve been audible outside the windows of my last two houses. This one is here for a purpose which will be revealed towards the end, in the subplot that keeps its head down throughout.

The picture of Aberdeen I paint is accurate to my own memories of the city. I spent a lot of time on that beach, with the lighthouse and golf course. The lighthouse may not have been there in 1914, but of course that doesn’t matter! And: lighthouses, Aberdeen, Horror of Fang Rock… I haven’t been telling you where Smith’s memories come from in general, but I’m too pleased with that one not to point it out.

‘Again?’ tells its own story by the time of Lungbarrow. The authors on the New Adventures line were aware of Andrew Cartmel’s plans for the series to varying degrees, but Peter Darvill-Evans had the whole picture, and would fill us in on what we needed to know. The intention of the book line was always to complete that plan, and we did! It incidentally clicked with my own mystical concerns.

Chapter Six

The title is from Kate Bush’s Running up that Hill. Bernice’s knight is, of course, Guy de Carnac [from Sanctuary].

In this chapter, in a dream, appears one of the Gods of Gallifrey, which were gradually developed during the New Adventures. The opinion I eventually came to, as we evolved them amongst the authors, was that they’re Eternals, as in Enlightenment, who have left human prey for the much richer material offered by Time Lords. Here, one appears in a much more floaty form, but not one incompatible with that view.

I’m a great believer in villains that are as clever as our heroes, and I think the villains here go about their plan with great skill. They act like trained intelligence officers would, and stay focussed on what they’re after. I find people like that, who don’t mind killing when it’s necessary, very frightening.

I also did my best to give them kinship and love for each other, something else one doesn’t often see in Who monsters. It’s the central New Adventures thought of adding a couple of levels of reality to the TV show. Once they’ve sealed off the village, overconfidence thankfully overtakes my villains.

The line that Smith quotes to Fiona in the bakery was originally the physicist Richard Feynman’s.

I’ve always taken extreme reassurance from the chorus of Voice of the Beehive’s I Say Nothing, which seems to me to be about the fan experience, and connects with the quotes at the start of the book. Smith slows down some of that chorus to Joan, semi-quoting it. Quotes weave their way in and out of a lot of my work without usually being announced as such, and sometimes without my knowledge.