There are moments in a writer's life that feel quietly significant. Not marked by champagne or book launches. Just a small pause that tells you something has changed.

Earlier this year, Deep House: A Haunting found a permanent home in the British Library and the National Archives.

It's an extraordinary thought.

Long after I'm gone, a copy of my novel will still be sitting on a shelf, waiting for someone I will never meet.

That felt like the right moment to do something else. To let go. 

While those copies settled into history, a handful of others were wrapped in black paper, sealed with wax, and quietly set free in Whitby.  No price tag. No expectation.  Just an invitation.

Find me.

Read me.

Then, when you're ready...

Pass me on.

I loved leaving them behind and wondering what might happen to them. Perhaps one is still waiting on a windowsill. Perhaps another has travelled hundreds of miles. Perhaps someone found one, read it in a single evening, and quietly passed it to a friend. I may never know. And somehow, that's the point.

Ghost stories have always travelled this way. Long before they were printed, they were whispered from neighbour to neighbour, shared around fires, carried home after dark. No one owned them. They simply travelled.

I rather like the idea that books can do the same. One copy rests safely in an archive. The others belong to chance. To curiosity. To whoever happens to discover them.

Perhaps they'll gather fingerprints, coffee stains, train tickets and handwritten notes inside the cover. Perhaps they'll become haunted in a different way...by the readers who carried them.

If you should ever stumble across one of these travelling copies, I'd love you to become part of its story.

Read it.

Sign it.

Leave a thought inside.

Then, when the moment feels right...

Set it free again.

Because some stories deserve to be preserved.

And others deserve to wander.