Emergence: When the Past Refuses to Stay Buried…

Summer has a reputation for brightness, long days, blue skies, holidays and freedom. But there’s another side to summer. A subtler side. The heat that shimmers above roads, blurring the distance, the way empty streets seem to hum in the baking afternoon sun with the suggestion of something about to happen, and the oppressive stillness before a storm. All the things that inspire a feeling that something is slightly off, though you can’t explain why. 

The uncanny thrives in summer.

For this month’s The Shadows of Summer theme, I’ve been reflecting on how certain memories seem to become more active during periods of heat and stillness. Perhaps it’s because summer has a way of transporting us back into ourselves. School holidays, childhood landscapes, familiar roads and long-forgotten places.

Of all my novels, Emergence may be the one most concerned with that return. John Gimmerick believes he’s escaped the darkness that haunted his younger years. Life has moved on and years have passed. Yet when he returns to his childhood home on the northeast coast of England, the past is waiting exactly where he left it. What begins as a homecoming soon becomes something far more unsettling. 

As his young daughter Seren experiences frightening nightly visitations, John’s forced to confront memories he’s spent years trying to suppress. The haunting he thought he’d left behind has returned, and this time it’s found a new target.

At its heart, Emergence is a story about the persistence of memory, the places that shape us, the fears we never truly outgrow, and the shadows that remain long after we convince ourselves they’ve gone. For me, that’s where the uncanny lives. Not in distant castles or forgotten graveyards, but in familiar streets, childhood bedrooms and landscapes we thought we understood. Because sometimes the most frightening thing isn’t discovering something new, it’s discovering something old is still waiting for you.

As part of this month’s The Shadows of Summer theme, Emergence is available at a special promotional price for the next couple of days.

If you feel drawn to stories where memory and haunting become difficult to separate, this is your invitation to join John on his return to the northeast coastal village of Horden.

Just don’t expect the past to stay buried.

And don’t expect it to be quaint.