Inside the mind of a vampire lover

The director of The Hobbit, Guillermo del Toro, settles down at his favourite Wellington cafe to talk to Tom Cardy about bringing his debut novel to life.

When Guillermo del Toro was 13, he wrote a short story about a girl who lives near a graveyard. Lightning wakes her one night. She looks out of her bedroom window and sees an animated corpse on the street staring back at her.

The girl goes missing and is later found inside a coffin in the cemetery, the corpse's arms wrapped around her.

In del Toro's debut novel The Strain, released next week, there's a scene where the young son of one of the protagonists wakes up and peeks out of his bedroom window. He sees a corpse-like naked man stumbling down the street. The man stops and stares up at the boy. Their eyes lock.

It's just one of many chilling scenes in The Strain, co-written with mystery thriller writer Chuck Hogan, that have their roots in del Toro's imagination and life. The idea for the short story - "my creative writing teacher hated it" - came from staring out of the window of his own bedroom at night. The street was empty, so his imagination took over.

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