Development
Ellis finished writing the novel in the summer of 2004. Ellis said the book was an homage to Stephen King and the comic books he loved as a child.
Ellis told the Manchester Evening News that the Terby "is based on a Furby but also there was this bird-like doll that my older sister had and I wrote a short story about it when I was 7 or 8. She used to scare me with it, I'd go to my bedroom and get into bed and it'd be there, she'd hide it there just to scare me. Or I'd be walking up the stairs and she'd chase me with it. And I think that's what I was channelling and it fitted in to all the other things that I was haunted by.” The revelation that 'Terby' is in fact 'Y Bret' (Why, Bret?) spelt backwards is an homage to the "redrum" (murder spelt backwards) plot device in King's The Shining.
The book carries an epigraph from Hamlet 1.v.98. This connects with the theme of haunting by a father as well as the names in the book (e.g. Elsinore, Osric, Fortinbras).
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