Another of the ideas I wanted to see if I could pin down revolved around an idle thought I had one day walking back to my hotel room down identical corridors. What if someone lived in the shadows inside the hotel, feeding on leftover room service?

The backstory of such a person would have to warrant their decision to continue living like that, and after that I just plugged in to some of the stories I had picked up from my wide reading of newspapers and magazines.

This was before the Billionaire’s race to get into space but well and truly after the SpaceX team were launching from their Mahia facility in NZ.

I had to drop a whole section of plot involving cable cutting submarines because I couldn’t quite make it match up with the other elements, but there was enough there to make for an engaging story. I had deliberately left the ending of The Kids Who Lived In A Hole open with regards to what happened with Uncle Reggie, so I owed my readers a resolution of that – which naturally enough led to a return to Eastwell Estate.