A few years ago, my cat Elmo died. He’d been with me since he was a tiny kitten and the comfort of his presence had seen me through some dramatic life changes. For several years, including the initial covid lockdowns, he was the only living company in my house.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, he was gone.

I’ll write properly about grief another time, but what struck me most with Elmo was the immediacy of it. We’d been around each other night and day for years. His absence was inescapable.

Even after the immediate shock wore off, there were moments that would catch me out. In particular, there was a green at the end of our street where he liked to spend time. I often walked home through there, and he’d come running from the trees to walk home with me, meowing about what he’d seen, brushing up against my leg because he hadn’t seen me for hours.

Walking there after his death, Elmo’s absence became a presence. Especially at night, when the darkness left space for the imagination, I could see him running home next to me, could hear his voice, feel his company. It was a bittersweet trick of the imagination, a comforting memory accompanied by a twist of grief’s knife. And it was so damn vivid in my mind.

When I wanted to write a story about walking, that experience became my starting point. The experience of walking alongside the ghost of someone you’re grieving, as their memory becomes real to you. That’s where the magic in Walking a Wounded Land comes from. It’s why a novella about walking and the land is also a story about grief and letting go. I took that feeling and amplified it through the greater grief of losing a human being you’ve been close to. I made the ghosts real.

I don’t live in that house anymore. I don’t walk through that green often. But when I do, Elmo walks beside me, and now he’s stalking through the pages of a book.

Walking a Wounded Land will be out in October from Wizard’s Tower Press.

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