Yeah, so I write novels. Some of them have been international bestsellers. I also write for technology companies. I’ve spent some years writing novels as my full-time job, and I have spent years writing for corporations as my full-time job. Now I just think of myself as a writer doing the best he can at whatever I work on.

Readers may be forgiven for not being able to get a clear bead on what kind of author I really am. While my latest novel, The Turn (coming in 2025), is a mainstream comedy set in the world of amateur golf, a story that deals with romantic relationships, male friendship, career crisis, alcoholism, and paternity surprises, I previously published six psychological-paranormal horror novels. 

My first novel, The Birthing House, was released in 2009 and became a (London) Times Top 10 bestseller, which allowed me to focus on writing novels full time for the next decade or so. Not coincidently, my early success with a haunted house tale also got me pegged, for better or worse, as a horror writer. I am not complaining. I grew up on horror and still love the genre. 

In addition to The Birthing House, my darker works include The Haunting of James Hastings (published in the US as Killing Ghost), The People Next Door, The Fading, The Orphan, and Beneath the Lake. 

But I haven’t published a novel since 2014 or thereabouts. 

So…what the hell happened, dude?

The short answer: Life. Life happened.

But the longer answer has to do with the reality of making a living (or not) solely as an author of fiction. Those of us who are fortunate enough to see our work published at all must decide what is the dividing line between writing books full time, writing books while also working at another job, or not writing books at all because the other job, the one that pays the bills, doesn’t leave us enough time to write a novel. Or, in my case, didn’t leave me enough time to write the novels I wanted to write.

But there’s more to it than that. As I was wrapping up my sixth novel, I was nearing the end of my contract for multiple books with my publisher. Sales of my last two novels had fallen somewhat… 
 

And then my father died, at age 70. That was a lot to deal with. I inherited a portion of his house and other assets. I ended up buying his house and spent the next year restoring it while I worked part-time and tried to get a foothold on my next novel.

By this time, I was ready for a break from horror, my publisher wanted only more horror books, and so I felt it was best to part ways. I didn’t want to write another horror novel with anything less than full-hearted commitment. So, I worked on my new house, and played around with a few new ideas for another novel, and eventually I had to get a real job. Before breaking through as a novelist, I had worked as a copywriter for consumer goods, and I had enjoyed it. I decided to return to the world of marketing.

In addition to giving us a dependable salary and benefits, copywriting is, I feel, an excellent job for a writer who writes fiction on the side. If you have an ear for marketing and can play nice on a creative team, copywriting can be a fulfilling way to make a living while also leaving you time to work on your books. 

​​

I really enjoyed coming out of my novelist’s cave and working on a creative team again. I didn’t realize how much I missed working with other bright, passionate people. And I fully embraced the team-player-borderline-leader role I found myself in for the next few years. And yet, as with any full-time job, copywriting can be consuming. I developed several manuscripts and many ideas for a new story, but none caught fire.

So, a few more years passed, then a few more, and somehow seven years went by without me finishing a new novel. It was during this time that I took up golf again. I had always enjoyed golf, but through my teens and twenties and thirties, I played only sporadically, maybe 5 to 20 times per year, with breaks of 3, 5 or 7 years in between where I played no golf at all.

But something was different this time. I had developed some anxiety issues, I was overweight, I had come to feel chained to a desk, and I wasn't getting outside and moving around enough. Golf seemed like a remedy for all that ailed me, supplying all of the following in single 4-hour increment: exercise, mobility, sunshine, social time, happy hour, and a healthy distraction.
 

This last piece is pretty important, I think. As writers, we tend to spend way too much time in our heads, overthinking everything, especially our work and whatever challenges and heartaches life has thrown our way. I quickly discovered that when I was golfing, all that melted away. There was only this game, this goal of making the ball go where I wanted it to.

Soon I realized that every time I played 18 holes, I spent the next 2-3 days feeling pleasantly spent, my mood elevated, as if I had temporarily exorcised some demon. I became obsessed with golf, started taking lessons, upgraded all my gear, and vowed I would never take a year off again.

As a writer, I had learned the importance of following one’s curiosity. Call it the muse if you like. But I prefer to think of it as chasing the energy. When curiosities become lasting interests and eventually passions, I start thinking, Hey now, we might want to write about this. There might even be a story in here. 

Because writing anything worth reading, especially a long work like a novel, demands that our subjects hold our interest, our passion, for months and years at a time. And for the first time in a while, I had found that thing. And golf, like writing itself, has all kinds of mystique about it. It’s fucking hard to do well, for one. For another, golf tests our focus, our body, and most of all our emotional balance, dare I say our overall mental health. When you come to the course feeling loose, optimistic, with the right mix of caring about each shot but not allowing yourself to get angry and filled with racing thoughts when things don't go so well, you play better. But when you bring that set of harder emotions out there along with your clubs, the course will quickly remind you that all is not well inside.

 

And there is poetry in this game. Fates swirl through the trees and grass. Seemingly tricky shots can turn out effortless while something as basic as hitting your ball from the center of the fairway, in perfect grass, with no obstacles ahead, can humiliate you. When things go right, when you visualize a shot and then execute it perfectly, you feel connected to something deep within yourself and the forces of nature. Golf is not a place for logic but flow. Not power but grace. Golf contains something indefinable, maddening, and at times, sublime.
 

Okay, so I was going to write a golf novel! 

During the four years I spent working on The Turn, I played more than 400 rounds of golf, lowered my handicap by 15 strokes, made two aces in the span of 33 days, lost 20 pounds, and ended my 30-year run with alcohol. Then of course I sent the book to my agent, and he loved it, and because he is a phenomenal agent, he was able to place it with a great publisher.

This was no small feat (on my agent's part or mine), considering I had (in the publishing world) been firmly branded as a horror writer. But little did they know (or care!) that before I wrote my horror novels, I spent 7 years or so writing screenplays, trying to crack the Hollywood oyster, and most of those scripts were COMEDIES. I wrote a couple of low-brow comedies, a couple of romantic comedies, then what I had hoped were more Coen Bros.-esque crime noirs with moments of absurd humor. 

 

And, while I may be the only one who noticed this, there are elements of humor and moments of comedy in all of my horror novels. No really. If you don't think Rick Butterfield in The Haunting of James Hastings isn't fucking hilarious (as well as occasionally terrifying), you may have fallen half asleep during those parts.
 

As many others have pointed out, the gap between horror and comedy is a very small one. I don’t know why, but it’s true. I found that as The Turn began to take shape, it had to be a comedy. How else can you deal with things like loss, divorce, career misery, addiction and general mental health problems, not to mention romantic mistakes and a few of the other soul-crushing things midlife throws at us, without laughing?

And you know what? I laughed my ass off all the way through The Turn, in the same way I had scared myself writing my horror novels. I kept faith that this was a sign I was capturing the energy authors must find for their stories to resonate with readers.

The Turn is a comedy, yes, but not a silly one. It's not Happy Gilmore, which of course I love. Nor is it really Caddyshack, which is one of the greatest comedies ever made, period. What I set out to do with The Turn, the tone I felt more appropriate for the subject matter, was more about finding very real and painful situations in life, the hard awakenings some of us go through around our 40s and 50s, and then confront them in ways that highlighted how the awkward and absurd, the disturbing and delightful, can and do coexist, even during dark days. This is a critical piece to how I see the world and make my way through life. My father was a great optimist, while my mother leans more toward the cynical. Both are valuable approaches to the challenges life throws at us. I suppose the coping mechanism I strive to hold onto is the ability to see things clearly, accept harsh realities, and then find a flashlight to help guide me through the darkness. Chin up, kid. Keep smiling. It will get better as long as you keep going.

 

Because, like most people, I have been through some serious shit. Difficulties in school, complicated relationships, marriage and divorce and then the loss of my ex-wife to addiction, as well as mental health struggles of my own including depression, anxiety, and alcohol misuse/abuse/choose your label. And the only way I have found through such emotionally cratering events is to confront, grieve, refocus on the good things, let go of previous expectations, and plot my way toward some new goal, a better lifestyle, a fresh start on something, even if it's just cleaning my house or taking my dog for a walk.

 

So, I'd like to say that The Turn is a comedy with a nice balance of dramatic weight lurking beneath the situational gaffs, golf humor, and bedroom hijinks. That's my hope, anyway. I am excited to hear what readers think.

There’s a lot more to that journey (how the book I started writing turned into something else entirely, for instance), but for now I will just wrap up by saying that The Turn is a novel I never knew I would write, it’s a book I had to write, and it arrived at a pivotal time in my life. As authors, we are proud of all our books, flawed though they may be. But we are proud of each one in unique ways, for different reasons. 

​

You're proud of your first novel because it's your breakthrough.

​

You're proud of your second novel because follow-ups are a bitch and just getting the damn thing done is a huge step in your career.

​

You're proud of your third novel because maybe you saw some growth there as a writer and you tried a different POV, a new style, or made a valiant attempt to turn a genre convention upside down.

​

You're proud of your fourth (these are all about me, in case it wasn't obvious by now) because it's the most linear, pure-story ride of all of them and you fell in love with this character and his path in the world.

​

You're proud of the fifth because you found a way to explore a seemingly esoteric subject through the lens of an otherwise tired trope while also paying homage to one of your favorite authors, and it was freeing.

​

You're proud of your sixth because it allowed you to check two boxes off your list of the kinds of books you always wanted to write (the family drama and the vacation gone wrong tale), not to mention you somehow managed to write deeply about your father while he was in his final months of a years-long struggle against cancer and you delivered the final manuscript literally two weeks before he died. Writing the book over the course of that year was the healthiest way possible for you to come to terms with losing Dad and you found comfort and meaning in his life and yours.

 

So you see, each book we write contains a new challenge and offers its own reward, and neither has to do with money or fame but more important things like survival, growth, peace, self-knowledge, and hopefully some kind of echo from the world that says yes, please, keep going, your contribution counts.

Your seventh novel?

 

Well, I am prouder of The Turn than anything I have ever written. 

And, at the risk of venturing into the land of hyperbole, simply because I don’t know how else to say this…The Turn changed my life. I mean that my journey to finding and completing the story the way it had to be told changed my life. And I mean that the characters, their problems and dilemmas and chemistry with one another, also changed my life. And somehow, I figured out along the way that I could not finish the novel unless I made serious changes to my own life.

Golf healed me. Writing a golf comedy healed me. Obsessively pursuing both the book and the game during the same span of years turned out to be the best medicine I have ever found.

I think that when you read the book you will understand. 

Enjoy your round.