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The media mogul of Mark Rider is an amalgam of contemporary media figures but draws particularly on a wide study of the Murdoch Empire, the central drama triggered by Rupert Murdoch’s dismissal of the Dalai Lama as ‘an old man in Gucci shoes’. It is also a response to the use of paparazzi, exemplified by the hounding of Diana Spencer and in media coverage as interrogated by the Leveson enquiry. It involved a study of The Tibetan Book of the Dead through Evans-Wentz’s 1923 translation, and particularly Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1992). Its ghost story reconfigures the English model which runs in a long line from Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898) and M.R.James’ Ghost Stories (1904 onwards) through Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (1983) and Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger (2005) in which ghosts are repressed and malign forces. Ectopia portrays them as figures who have taken the bodhisattva vow of continual rebirth till the enlightenment of all sentient beings, the malign force in the ghost story removed from the supernatural to the political realm. In Ectopia, links between the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese commerce and overseas industry are based on such works as David Segal’s China Rising (1997) and supported by the author’s own research visits to China, which also provided location details for the political retreats at the resort of Bei Dai He. Similar extended visits and immersive research provided the detail for all the sites mentioned in Santa Fe, from the housing and hillsides to the airport and stupa; the coastline, National Trust housing, lighthouse and pub at Birling Gap; the restaurant Rules; a private jet journey from LA to Albuquerque; the Park Avenue apartment.