Kate Evans

It's not that easy to be deaf because of the weather that she has to confront every day, you know, the enormous amount of rainfall in that part of Sweden, keeping her hearing aids dry, that kind of thing.

But she's always up to the task.

She has this kind of internal momentum where she will not give up on a victim or a victim's family.

She always wants to get to the bottom of a story to do them justice.

I think Tuva kind of chose me rather than the other way around.

I had the idea for Dark Pines, the first in the series back in 2015.

And she came to me like a thunderbolt.

I'm a very visual writer.

And one night I saw in my mind's eye this vast forest bigger than the one I live in.

And I zoomed in in my mind's eye.

I saw a gravel track snaking through the pine trees.

I zoomed in some more.

I saw a big pickup truck.

And I looked through the driver's side window and there was a young woman there.

driving the truck and she had hearing aids.

So it wasn't a conscious decision.

She kind of came to me like a thunderbolt.

And then I didn't know if I could do her justice.

I didn't know if I, through doing research and talking to deaf people and reading blogs by deaf writers, I didn't know if I could do her justice, but I decided I wanted to try.

So I wrote a first draft