Dervla McTiernan

But do you remember the movie Seven with Brad Pitt?

Believe it or not, that movie is 30 years old, which freaks me out, but it is.

And there's a scene at the very end of the book where a cardboard box is delivered to a desert and Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are there and Brad Pitt is screaming, what's in the box?

And I won't mention what's in the box in case you haven't seen the movie, but...

It's the idea that this innocuous, almost household object can contain such utter destruction.

Like in that moment, once you open that box, everything changes.

There is no going back.

And I didn't realize I'd drawn that probably from that source until really until I started talking about the book coming into publication and I sort of put it together.

So I think it's funny where you just draw those bits of old memories, bits of movies, bits of TV shows, conversations you've overheard.

They all come together to make something new.

right in that moment and I think just capturing that feeling that tension in your stomach even the fact that for most of these characters they don't recognize this for what it is in the moment they're opening this box and they can't make sense of what they're looking at it doesn't seem like much but it

becomes everything.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

I mean, I discovered audiobooks when my children were very little and I was feeding them and realised I couldn't feed a baby and hold a novel at the same time.

It was too difficult.

And I fell in love with audiobooks then.

I've been listening ever since.

And what I've found is that it doesn't reduce my reading.

It widens it.