Published in December 2018, Stand Against The Dark is the first book in the Ivyford Chronicles series. It's based around the village of Ideford where I spent part of my childhood, although there are a couple of additions to the village. Sadly, there is no cricket pitch in the village and the watermill was also my creation. Many of the other locations do exist, however, such as the Horse and Groom pub, shown here, which is better known as The Royal Oak, a place where I spent many winter evenings surreptitiously purchasing my father's cigarettes after he got barred. I could only have been 10 or 11 and it would never happen today!

The idea for Stand Against The Dark had been in my head for such a long time. As a child, I wrote so many stories, regularly churning out mysterious and creepy tales for anyone who would read them. I stopped writing seriously in my early twenties as life took over. Fortunately, around 2015 (at the age of 42), I rediscovered the sheer joy that it had given me when I was younger and for the last eleven years I have written regularly, although life still tries to make it difficult at times! 

I wanted to use the village of Ideford as the setting for the first book. The remoteness always felt a little unsettling to me when I lived there, the empty streets more creepy during the day than they were at night. I also love 'village under seige' stories, so it's no surprise that I chose such a secluded location. 

The second image is of Church Road, where Danny Anderson lives with his Mum, Jenny. Their house, the first that you would come to if you were to walk up the hill from the church is the same house that we lived in back in the 1980s. 

The third and fourth images below are of the church, a central location in the story (I don't want to give too much away for anyone who hasn't read the book yet). The cricket ground that isn't really there would be to the left of the church in the third image.