India, Sept. 20 -- 1What inspired Seascraper, and how did the story develop from that first burst of idea into a novel? It began with an impulse to write about where I grew up. I grew up on the northwest coast of England in a dreary town called Southport. I was drawn to writing about home without actually putting a name on it. The more I thought about it, a photograph that my younger brother had taken of a shed on wheels parked up on the beach kept popping up. I knew what it was, a shrimping vessel, but I had never really thought of the industry as a whole and how big it was where I grew up. Slowly I grew attached to the idea of writing about one of these people, because I could place myself on that beach with them. I could project myself empathetically into that character. And I would say that was the starting point. Once I realised that [the character] could be a young person who's inherited this sense of duty from his forefather, I understood I could attach him to the similar sort of ambitions I had when I was his age of wanting to get away from that place, while still feeling that he belonged there. 2Seascraper has been praised for its lyrical prose and sense of tension. How do you approach language, pacing, and tone to achieve this effect? I'm really pleased that people have responded to it in that way. Because a lot of labour goes into making the prose flow. I try as hard as I can, even if it's painful on some days, to make each sentence as fresh as it can be. I don't like to repeat the same word in the same paragraph. If I can help it, I avoid using phrases that I feel are too straightforward. But over the course of my life as a writer and reader, I think I've learned how to blend the two tones, which are the direct, conversational/confessional and the more authored, crafted sentence of a third person narrator. I sit with a typewriter and try and write and rewrite the first sentence till it's got a tone of voice or sense or manner of expression which excites me. Then I move to the next one, which many times makes me go back to the previous one. So, my writing is very tidal in a way, that constant washing in and washing out. And honestly, that is where the fun of writing is to me, kneading of the raw material into the effect you want. 3You grew up in northwest England. How did your early environment shape your storytelling? Growing up in the north of England is a very different experience from where I live now [London]. When I was growing up in my town, I never wanted to write about it. It felt parochial and slow, lacking any dramatic interest at all. It felt to me that if you wanted to write about the North, everything came out in a slightly comic way or sounded like Coronation Street. I went to live and study in Canada, and that felt like I received a gift; it gave me a newfound appreciation of where I came from....