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An Interview with Linnhe Harrison

harrison

Born in Chester, UK, Linnhe spent her home-ed childhood between North Wales and the Lake District. She worked as an animator and as a sailing instructor prior to moving into graphic design and marketing. Having previously enjoyed dabbling in shorter forms of creative writing, she started working on the dystopian world of Edwin Cooper in the summer of 2023. The Incredible Machines of Thinkery: Outpost 9 is her first novel.


Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I came quite late to writing and (sorry, I confess!) I have always felt more influenced by film than the written word. I enjoy visualising how a character may look, behave, react. In my head, each scene is set with time, place, light. What can’t I see? What is the smallest detail? What does it smell like?

What inspired you to start writing this book?

I found a picture on Google Maps of the Drenkelingenhuisje. This is a real place, a tiny cabin on the Dutch island of Vlieland. It fascinated me – and the book actually started life as a screenwriting exercise, I had this footage in my head of a drone shot flying low over the North Sea, nothing but sea, then a strip of sand would come into view, and then the camera would swoop in low on this incredible little cabin. It is very isolated – I visited it in November 2023 for research – yet so utterly beautiful. I want to go back!

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I love titles… I came up with the concept for the story (thinkery technology), but wanted to give the title a more steampunk feel, hence The Incredible Machines of Thinkery. The subtitle is Outpost 9 because I wanted to pin the book to the location, right from the very start.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Ooh, great question! “I.C.U.” by Dhani Harrison – if the book was a film, this is the track that would be playing in the opening sequence, as the camera sweeps in over the sands towards Outpost 9.

Describe your dream book cover.

The fonts are so important; they can tell you so much about the genre and author before you’ve even opened the book. I love a relevant colour palette (ie when designing the cover for Outpost 9 I wanted it to carry the colours of the island (biscuits and creams and teals and blues). For me, a matte finish every time.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

Animator, sailing instructor, barista, graphic designer. I was home-educated and never went to school. When I first started writing in 2022, I had to Google ‘what is an adjective’.

What books did you read (for research or comfort) throughout your writing process?

Creating a true sense of place, neglect, isolation and peace was so important to me. The world of Outpost 9 needed to feel as real to the reader as their own home. I found myself collecting books, Instagram feeds, postcards, etc., of abandonment. My go-to book became Abandoned: The Most Beautiful and Forgotten Places from Around the World – it contains sometimes spine-tingling, always gorgeous examples of nature reclaiming manmade spaces. A Woman in the Polar Night by Christine Ritter gave me the courage to use more poetic language when describing the world around us.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I would like them to be surprised, I would like them to look at the beauty of nature in a different way.


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