The two inspirations converged and I made up the seven bells, with their names and characteristics. That led me to look into the naming of bells. Around the same time, from reading Dorothy Sayer’s murder mystery The Nine Tailors, I became aware that church bells often had names. Candles were out because they would not be very dramatic and also highly impractical (at least so I thought back then, I have since considered ways they could work). Books were out, because I wanted something different from books of spells. Possibly the most famous form of exorcism is ‘by bell, book and candle’. The first was that I was trying to think up a kind of magic that was a bit different to that normally encountered in fantasy fiction, and as it was to be used by the Abhorsens I was looking into folklore about exorcising evil spirits and so on.
However, in the case of the bells that necromancers and the Abhorsens use, I think there were two points of inspiration. It’s always difficult to work out where particular ideas come from. Why did you choose bells as the tools of necromantic magic?
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