“Slowly I began to hold together better, leave less of myself behind.” The voice of Caitlin from the dark realms of death, trying to reform herself so that she can account for what happened to her at the hands of her violent boyfriend Ryan.
I loved writing these parts of the book, imagining a cosmos that was perhaps frightening and lonely but that she none the less comes to master in some way. The idea of a blackness that could be carved came in part from reading Paradise Lost – Milton’s descriptions of Satan, magnificent and darkly glittering, always stuck with me. However, there is no heaven or hell in Caitlin’s cosmos. It is a place of energies and directions, of speed and arc. Baffling at first but eventually Caitlin finds mastery of it.
Twice the Speed of Dark is available from all good book sellers.
Lulu Allison, contemporary fiction author 