I think there’s always something special about a debut novel: it’s usually the culmination of a long, long period of work, hair-tearing, sleepless nights, failures, disappointments… and, waiting in the wings, the desire to show who you are as a writer. What makes you tick? In All The White Spaces, I unashamedly put together some of my favourite preoccupations: survival horror, supernatural horror, and how we act in extremis. Here are some of the things which went into the melting pot.
Unexplained disappearances
I’ve always been the sort of person who falls into deep wikiholes looking into anything mysterious or ‘unexplained’, but there’s just something about human vanishings that gets to me – in this interconnected age, it’s even more eerie to think about people just disappearing off the face of the earth, leaving behind only a few tantalising clues. There’s nothing I love more than a good abandoned location, either: places where the evidence of human occupation is degrading and decaying with time and the elements. Give me a ghost ship, a rusting unpopulated whaling station, or a village with no occupants and none of the doors locked.
Shackleton’s Endurance expedition
Sir Ernest Shackleton (aka ‘The Boss’) looms large over the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. And his most famous (although ultimately unsuccessful) expedition was on the Endurance, which was crushed by Weddell Sea pack ice off the coast of Antarctica. Shackleton quietly turned to his men and said: “Ship and stores have gone – so now we’ll go home.” He led his men on a frankly mind-boggling journey by ice and boat and across the mountains of South Georgia to secure rescue. It’s one of the greatest survival stories ever told, and I just love it: from the countless books on my shelves to the photographs of the Endurance on my walls, and the nod given via the name of the ship in my own book (the Fortitude), I’m completely obsessed.
The criminal Bar
I was a writer, and then I was a criminal barrister for eleven years in London and the South East, prosecuting and defending cases ranging from shoplifting to murder and armed robbery. Now I’m a writer again. My time at the Bar stood me in good stead (I read very quickly as a result of all those late nights trying to cram for the next day’s trial!) but also gave me an invaluable look at human nature, up close and personal. I would normally encounter individuals on one of the worst days of their lives, and I’ll never cease to be fascinated by how extreme situations bring out either the best or the worst in people.
Horatio Hornblower
I’d love to say that I’m a good sailor. In fact, I’m a terrible one: as part of my research for All The White Spaces I went on a vintage sailing ship on the Baltic Sea in October (in full period costume!) and learnt that seasickness added to my already mighty dislike of the cold and the wet. While I might have dreamt of adventures in the rigging, I spent most of my time scheming below-decks and trying not to throw up. But I grew up on CS Forester’s Hornblower novels, which were a great favourite of my paternal grandfather, and tell the story of a green-about-the-gills young midshipman in His Majesty’s Navy during the Napoleonic wars. (Okay, I admit – the TV adaptations starring Ioan Gruffud, Robert Lindsay et al were also extremely easy on the eye). Some of that sheer enthusiasm for ships, and men on ships, and general derring-do has always stayed with me, and crept into my novel even if I couldn’t personally relate.
Conversations With Dead People
I spent a great deal of time pondering and researching the uncanny mimic as it appears in various cultures, because there’s nothing I find creepier than something which looks nearly human, but isn’t. I love to play with the question of whether something is supernatural, or psychological, or an entirely different class of thing altogether… It wasn’t until I’d finished my debut novel and started on the next one that it hit me: Season 7 Episode 7 of Buffy (Conversations With Dead People) – in which Buffy and her friends experience a number of visitations, both corporeal and ghostly, both deceptive and genuine – must have been quite the formative influence.
Ally Wilkes grew up in a succession of isolated—possibly haunted—country houses and boarding schools. After studying law at Oxford, she went on to spend eleven years as a criminal barrister. Ally now lives in Greenwich, London, with an anatomical human skeleton and far too many books about Polar exploration. You can follow Ally on Twitter @UnheimlichManvr. Utilizing her lifelong love of horror and literature from the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, Wilkes conducted extensive research to create a story rich in details that transports readers to the 1920s and the South Pole.
