Author's Note: For Phantom Love, my inspiration is a church yard in a little village in the Kent countryside called Wittersham. When I was a girl, my father was the rector of Wittersham and the primary school I went to was right next to the churchyard. There was only an open railing between us and what was a largely wild area. And, in the long grass, there were lots of rather dramatic tombs. One I remember vividly was made up of a large sarcophagus, broken in places and surrounded by brambles and a rusty fence. There was one time when a bunch of us were daring each other to stick our hands in the dark holes made by the breaks in the stonework.
I was never brave enough, but that dare is where the start of this story came from, so I hope you enjoy Ellen and Ben's tale.
Sophie was born with the writing bug in her blood, boring her primary school teachers with pages of creative writing and killing her first typewriter from overuse when she was thirteen. She began publishing her work online while at university where she discovered the internet and fanfiction. It took another decade for Sophie to realise her long-time dream of releasing her own original fiction.