Kester Grant

inspired the birth of The Miracle Court, where it came from.

I'm definitely going to one day manage to tell a story, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, because it is the book that I was brought up on, 100%.

My other great passion is Sherlock Holmes.

So I definitely, definitely want to do something with that.

But I was a real child of classics.

I just read what was on my parents' shelf.

And Wuthering Heights is the big one for me because...

I was eight years old when I had read Wuthering Heights about 11 times and my parents decided they had to take it away from me because it wasn't normal that an eight-year-old child would be so obsessed by such a gothic tale of two frankly disturbing people doing disturbing things to everyone around them.

As an adult, I read Wuthering Heights and I said to myself, how did I think this was romantic?

They are awful, awful people.

But I was obsessed with Wuthering Heights as a small child.

And I think that also influenced the Miracle Court because the setting, the weather, the moors in Wuthering Heights feel very much like a character.

And I think that also influenced the fact that the city is a character in itself in Court of Miracles.

I always make time to read, especially because a lot of my projects, future projects, things that I want to work on next,

I can't sit down and write a project without doing research.

I can't sit down and write a story where someone is telling stories within the story and not think, oh, that's like the Arabian Nights.

I should go and read the original three-volume version.

It's just not in me.

I always am drawn back to the bookshelf, drawn back to the stories that came before it, the stories that are in the same shape as it.

I want to go back in and read them to see how they might inform and create a richer project for me.