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“Frank, you awake?”

Connor’s face slowly comes into focus, but so do others; a small crowd has gathered around, like they always do.

“You okay?” he says.

I try to respond but my brain feels like its recalibrating and everything is momentarily on hold.

“Mate? Can you hear me?”

I eventually manage a nod, lie there for a minute or two longer, then struggle to pull myself up into a sitting position, just as two paramedics arrive.

“You called a fucking ambulance?” I say.

“I didn’t”, he shakes his head, “The club’s manager did.”

He motions towards a woman, maybe in her thirties, talking to one of the paramedics, as the other tends to me. It is only at this point I realise I have a huge gash on my head and there’s blood all down my shirt.

In that moment, the sight of blood takes me straight back to that street in Mile End. Knife in hand. Death in front of me. Blood everywhere. I panic and start to breathe faster. I can feel my heart racing. I’m going to pass out so I try to focus on the reassuring voice in front of me. “Calm down sir. Try to take slow deep breaths. Slow breaths. You’re going to be okay.”

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My mind slowly slides back to the conscious. Around me the crowd, consisting of Connor, the Club Manager, a couple of doormen, and a few concerned bystanders, look at me with varying degrees of pity and, though I’m still fucked enough not to care right now, I am lucid enough to know that tomorrow, I will.

Though I don’t want to go to hospital, the paramedics insist. My heart rate is too high and the gaping wound on my head needs stitches so I clamber into the back of the ambulance to be taken to Homerton Hospital, where I’m put on a drip and sat in a hallway for a couple of hours to wait for a bed to become free. When one eventually does, I have already gone through that unpleasant process of sobering up without sleeping. Just waiting with your thoughts that slide, inevitably, from pleasure to pain. I shut my eyes and start to feel the shame build up.

Between the brain scan, the four stiches to the head, and a doctor’s assessment, I manage to grab a few hours of sleep, before finally being discharged around half-ten, the following morning. With the freedom of falling gone, my fractured body and mind, has, again, crashed at rock bottom. And it hurts, in every way possible.

After a cab ride home, I crash out on my bed and don’t get up again until Sunday. And I only get up then because the nightmares get to much. There are moments, of course, when I wake but, faced with having to deal with the fallout of drinking again, doing drugs, ending up in hospital, missing work and, generally acting like a twat, I force myself back to sleep. When I do eventually get up, I switch my phone on and I’m bombarded with texts and voicemails from my boss, but I don’t read or listen to them. They have nothing good to tell me and, until I absolutely have no choice but to deal with the situation, I won’t. The rest of the day is spent regretting everything. I was just a week shy of one hundred days sober. One hundred fucking days! I don’t think I’ve manged more than a few weeks before. I was doing so well and was actually proud of it. I’d even been collecting coins at my support group. I got as far as getting the 40 Day one before the stock ran out and no one reordered. Now, after one night, one stupid night of weakness, I’m back to zero. Back to the start, like it all meant nothing. And what do I have to show for it? A smashed-up face, head full of bedlam, and probably no job to go back to. Running my fingers through my hair, I sigh. What a waste.

Worry, followed by rituals, followed by panic, followed by more rituals, cage me in. I barely sleep all night. Finally, I find myself, on Monday morning, sitting in front of my boss. He’s mad; going on and on about my absenteeism, lateness, missed targets, crappy work ethic, general demeanour and, of course, Friday’s missed shift. As he gets further and further into his clearly pre-planned speech, his anger builds and a deep shade of scarlet blooms across his face. Veins throb under the skin on his forehead. He’s going to fire me. It’s clear as day and, let’s face it, I deserve it. Had I not still been caught up in the aftermath of Thursday night’s events, feeling broken and fragile, I’m sure I’d have walked out but, my mindset is one of submission, so I just sit there and take it. Quite pathetic really. In an attempt to demonstrate a credible show of remorse, I pull the hat from my head -I’d worn it to hide my embarrassment as much as anything- to offer a heartfelt apology but, the moment he sees the stitched wound above my left eye, he stops, mid-sentence, and just stares. I don’t know if seeing it makes him feel sorry for me, or maybe, until that point, he had convinced himself that my explanation had been purely fictional and now he feels guilty about making that assumption, but he rescinds the dismissal to a final written warning. Life goes on. I guess he isn’t such a bad guy.

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If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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This is the image going on the back cover.

Those of you reading along will remember chapter one. Frank Bowden is not a violent man. He never wanted to hurt anyone. But when a stranger pulls a knife on him in this alley, Frank has his hand forced, and the struggle ends with the stranger dead. Then Frank runs. This is that alley, and it’s where Frank’s life stops being his own.

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Now, about those bricks

You’ll have noticed they’re a bit bare. A wall like that is wasted without graffiti, and I’d like it to be yours. This is your chance to be on a book cover, which doesn’t come around often.

You’ve read along, commented, restacked and put up with my plot twists, so I want to put your names on the book. Here’s how to get yours on the wall:

1. Restack this post

2. Leave a comment answering one question: Frank runs. Would you have?

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That’s all. Run, hand yourself in, or something worse. Be honest. I won’t judge, though Frank might.

Every handle that takes part will be scrawled somewhere on the bricks of the finished cover.

The small print

• Handles need to be in by Friday 13th November. It seemed the right date for a thriller.

• The more of you who restack, the more wall gets covered, so please share it far and wide.

• If you’ve only just found this, chapter one is the place to start. It’s short, it’s quick, and you can find it here

• Handles will go on the back cover only. The front is still under wraps, and I’ll share more soon.

Thank you

I mean this: thank you for reading. Every comment, restack and message has meant more to me than I can easily say. You’ve stuck with Frank through some very dark places, and your support is the reason this book is getting a proper cover at all. Putting your names on it is the smallest way I can say thanks.

Now go on. Would you have run?

Will

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If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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I find myself sleeping more and more. Or at least trying to. Lazing about, unwashed and undressed, I waste away days on end. Just sleeping. Only getting up every now and then to take a piss or grab a slice of toast. And the nightmares return with a vengeance. Wilson’s dying eyes, a nightly image of torment fixed in my subconscious. Most nights they’re just flashbacks, but they feel so real; my muscles tighten for the brief moment of resistance, as the blade pierces his ribcage. I can feel his breath on me and smell blood. Other nights, he’s tormenting me. Just reciting the words Killer, Murderer, Monster, Evil over and over. And then there are the ones where he’s just curled up on the floor crying. No words, just tears. And they’re the worst. I’m no stranger to waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath.

In the absence of anything else to do, I start to obsess over Danielle. I keep finding myself drawn to her Facebook profile, looking at her perfect photos, of her perfect life, with her perfect baby, in her perfect home, wearing perfect clothes and, of course, with her perfect boyfriend who, a couple of weeks ago, became her perfect fiancé. I hate him.

As we get closer to summer, and the weather starts to improve, staying sober gets harder and harder for me. It’s the beer gardens. They are so inviting. So, with things being the way they are, it was always likely that, at some point, I’d be tempted. Though I know, in that situation, I need to call someone from groups and get to a meeting as soon as possible, when the time does actually come, and the road does fork, I do neither. After a late Thursday shift, that includes a bollocking from the boss about absenteeism and missed targets, it’s all the excuse I need to join Connor down the pub. I fall off the wagon. Or maybe I jump. But I feel like I’m done. I just want to forget. Just for a night. And, until you hit rock bottom, there’s a kind of freedom in falling.

Like with most bad decisions I’ve made throughout my life, I justify it and rationalise it away. I tell myself things like I can handle it and I deserve it. It’s just one night. I’m not a ‘real’ alcoholic. But none of that matters when he hands me that first pint. The freedom of falling.

About two hours, and four beers, later I make my second bad decision of the night- to dab a bag of Molly, in the toilet cubicle, with Connor. I’ve fallen now, so I might as well go all out. This is quickly followed by bad decision number three; go to a club. But there wasn’t really much to decide. Having made bad decision number two, I’m all in.

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After a fifteen-minute cab ride, the duration of which Connor pretty much constantly talks for, we arrive at a basement club in Dalston. I have no idea why he chose this place, it’s full of hipsters, and exactly the kind of place I would normally avoid. But tonight, the MDMA rushing through my system says that it’s perfect. We grab more drinks and head to the dance floor. Now, I never dance, but here we are. Two sweety, wasted, slightly overweight, office boys, in amongst the conditioned beards, Homburg hats, thick-framed glasses, immaculately pressed shirts, and pointed leather boots, just moving with the music. The lights flash and flutter above us like giant dancing fireflies. Astral motion lines entwine, merge and blend before dispersing, scattering to the corners of the club like shooting stars. A stellar artistry that pulses hypnotically with the music. My sensory perception has been turned up to maximum and I’m rushing. No sadness, no guilt, no regret, and no bad memories; they never happened. No rituals, numbers, symmetry or patterns. None of it. A temporary state of drug-induced freedom. Am I okay with that? Right now, I am.

I don’t know how long we dance for, but I do know we work our way through another baggy, and everything starts to go hazy. Another part of me takes over. I’m on auto-pilot, kamikaze-style. As more people get crammed in here, and heavily perspiring bodies bounce off each other, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter. A veil of sweat hangs in the air over the dance floor and I start to feel light-headed and a bit sick, so go to find a quiet corner, sit down, and try to get my head together. But I’m drenched in sweat and fidgety. I can’t settle and I decide I need to go and get some fresh air. That’s the last thought I have before my legs give way, and my head crashes into the table in front of me.

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If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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I get to tonight’s group early and ask around about her. It doesn’t help that I don’t even know her last name, but I have to try something. One thing about the groups are that most people are friendly, show genuine empathy and concern, and want to help. However, as reassuring those human qualities are, when it comes to helping me, desire without any kind of capability is frustratingly worthless. This is the second week I’ve been asking about her, but no one seems to know anything. My state of mind lurches between a feeling of helplessness and panic, with a fistful of gut-wrenching guilt thrown into the mix now and then for good measure. Why, oh why did I not have the balls to ask for her number? It’s typical of me. I thought about it, I thought about it, thought about it some more, and then the chance was gone. I don’t want to face the very real possibility that I have lost her already but, with every blank stare, every shake of the head, and every shrug of the shoulders that my desperate questions are met with, I’m forced further and further down that road.

Feeling dejected and useless, I file into the church hall for the start of the meeting. Someone gets up and starts going through the usual welcomes and announcements but I’m not really listening. My body is there but my mind is with Evie. I scan the faces in the meeting and desperately try to recall if I have seen any of them with her. A few minutes before the tea break, a lady walks through the door and I experience some vague flicker of recollection. At first, I think its wishful thinking, but the more I look at her, the more convinced I am that I saw her chatting with Evie the night we’d met, so, as soon as the group breaks, I make a beeline for her.

“Excuse me Miss…..”

“Do you have a lighter?” She cuts in, taking a cigarette from the box, positioning it delicately between her lips.

“Sorry, no, I gave up”.

“Gave up carrying lighters?”

“No. Gave up smoking.”

“I know, that was my attempt at humour” she laughs.

“Um, ok. Er, sorry. My name’s Frank, I was hoping to ask you about Evie who comes to this group. You know her, right? I’m sure I’ve seen you talking to her.”

“Yeah, I know her. We go to a few of the same groups. What do you want to know?” she says as she playfully flicks her eyebrows.

“Well, I’m her friend and I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks. I’m worried about what might have happened. Like, maybe she relapsed or something. I just want to make sure she’s ok. Have you spoken to her?”

She pauses, “Not for a week or so, maybe longer.”

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“Okay, well, do you have her number?”

She narrows her eyes slightly, scrutinizing me, before saying, “And you’re her friend, you say?”

“Yeah”, I nod.

“You’re her friend…….. but you don’t have her number?”

“Uh”, I pause momentarily, faced with an obstacle I didn’t even consider. “Yeah.”

“That’s strange. How good friends are you? What did you say your name was?”

“Frank.”

“Well, Frank, she hasn’t mentioned you.”

Even within the genuine and serious concern for Evie’s wellbeing, I feel the stinging pang of disappointment. She hasn’t mentioned me.

“You’re her friend, not a stalker or anything, right?” She pauses, “Look. I don’t know you so I’m not going to just dish out her number. You could be anyone. Like a weirdo, or a psycho, or something. I mean, she’s a pretty girl.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she is.” I say, sighing as the words glide from my mouth.

I think of how great she looked last time I saw her. I guess some silly dreamy look glazes over my eyes because the woman responds with a very suspicious, “Well, that response isn’t helping your cause, Frank.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Look, I am genuinely worried about her. She might have got back on the gear, you know? I’m just concerned for her. I know you don’t want to give out her number but, if you’ve got it, can you just call her? Please? Just let me know she’s ok. Please, it’s important.”

After a short pause and looking me up and down again, presumably for some sign that I might be a psycho or something, she says, “Ok, I guess I could do that”. She gets out her phone, taps the screen a few times then holds it to her ear. After a short pause she looks back at me and says “voicemail” and hands me the phone, “leave her a message if you want”.

I take the phone from her and clear my throat.

“Hi Evie, it’s me, Frank. Frank from support groups. I haven’t seen you around for a while. I’m, um, I’m a bit worried about you. Can you call me when you get the chance? I just want to make sure you’re okay, that’s all.”

I look at the woman who nods at me, before leaving my number and a few more pleas for her to get in touch and such like, then hand back the phone and thank her.

“Well, Frank from support groups, I hope she calls you.”

“Yeah, me too. Listen, thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”

We file back to our seats for the second half of the meeting and I feel a little better now that she has at least got my number. A little closer to her.

A young woman, about Evie’s age, gets up and starts telling her story. At the groups, people say look for the similarities in the stories, not the differences. Well, all I can see in her story is Evie, so when she talks about overdosing on a particularly potent batch of heroin after falling off the wagon, it’s as if she is narrating my fears and it sets off my thoughts. I try to visualise happy, healthy people but images of Evie in a state of deep distress keep flashing in my mind’s eye. 1-2-2-1, 2-1-1-2, 2-1-1-2, 1-2-2-1.

Tonight’s meeting is in a church hall. It’s cold and dank which seems fitting for the way I’m feeling. Others start sharing their stories. Everyone’s story resonates with me. Different names, different places, different times and different circumstances, but all the same; an intrinsic pull towards devastation, destruction and oblivion, and the inability to say no.

The meeting wraps up at about 8pm and a few of the regulars invite me for a coffee but I decline, I’m in no mood to chat. All I can think about is Evie; hopeful she’ll call, but scared she won’t. Instead, I hope the walk home under tonight’s unusually starry London sky will help me clear my head, but it doesn’t. It comes to me that avoiding stepping on the cracks in the pavement will save her, so I walk the majority of the two miles home with my eyes scanning the pavement for a safe passage. On the few occasions I look up I seem to be confronted with 3 of everything; 3 cars, groups of 3 people, signs with 3 names on them, 3s in number plates, the 3s on 30 limit signs. They jump out at me at every possible chance, and stay, indelibly printed on my mind’s eye. The number 3 bus goes past me. Every time I have to play out a ritual. Over and over again.

By the time I get home, I’m mentally exhausted. I collapse in bed and try to recall any detail from our conversation that could give me any idea where she is or where she could have gone but I come up empty. I feel so totally helpless. I know she isn’t in contact with her dad, and as far as I know, there is no other family to speak of that she could be with. Her friends, if that’s what you’d call them, are part of her drug life that she is trying to leave behind. Maybe I’m all she’s got and I can’t reach her. A cold sweat of panic clings to my body and I stare at the ceiling like it could give me answers. I could go to the police, but what would I say? I just want to report the disappearance of my friend. The friend whose number and address I don’t have. The friend whose surname I don’t know. The friend who I don’t have a picture of and the friend who I have only met once. Oh, and by the way, she’s a heroin addict.

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The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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In true I-was-blind-but-now-can-see style, this changes everything. I begin taking an interest in life again and it is amazing. Back at work, I even start exceeding my targets for the first time in years. I renew my gym membership, start exercising and put myself on a diet. I buy a blender and replace two meals a day with juice drinks. I have settled on carrot, apple and ginger. The weight just drops off of me and people are noticing it. I quit smoking. I buy myself vitamin supplements. I drink bottled water. I go to the dentist for the first time in God-knows-how-long. I use moisturiser and eye creams, facial scrubs and skin-toners. I start going to bed at a reasonable time, sticking regimentally to an eight-hours-a-night sleeping pattern. I even decide to give my AA groups another go and that’s where I meet The Girl, and isn’t there always a girl?

Her name is Evie. She’s sweet, funny and beautiful. Like girl-next-door beautiful. Only, next door is a halfway house. She has been clean for a few weeks, after managing to split with her violent, drug-dealer, heroin addict boyfriend. He sounds like such an arsehole. Her biggest issue is definitely heroin but alcohol, as it is for so many, will always be a gateway, so in addition to attending NA meetings, she is also part of AA.

It was complete chance that I had met her, but then, isn’t everything? I’d been advised to go to as many groups as I could, especially at first, to try to fill my time. Avoid extended periods of boredom and isolation. That’s when temptation is strongest. So, I had been picking meetings at random from around east London and the city. Trying out different groups. And, it is at a Tuesday night, big book study group, in a church hall in Bank, that I meet her. We strike up a conversation and go for a coffee after. Coffee has become my thing in the absence of any other chemical stimulant. Our interactions start, like they often do in these groups, with us telling our own stories. Evie’s is a sad one. She has lost her mother recently to alcoholism. Something has happened with her father, he threw her out I think, and she doesn’t see him anymore. She doesn’t like to talk about it. Now she lives in squats, on the streets, basically anywhere she can find shelter. And she found heroin and it took over her injurious existence. I wish I could give her back what life has taken from her.

After leaving the coffee shop, we go for a walk and find a little grassy area, tucked away amid the office blocks area and sit down on a bench. Evie picks a daisy holds it up to the night sky. “Have you ever thought how a flower is purely functional?” she says to me in her kind of own, a little bit dreamy, but totally endearing, way.

“All it’s got is living”, she goes on, gazing at the daisy and rolling its stem in her fingers. “It doesn’t think, regret, love, hate, forgive, or forget. It just lives. It just dies.”

It just lives. It just dies.

“When we met” she goes on. Her thoughts are sporadic and she has a tendency to jump from topic to topic within one conversation. “When we met earlier tonight, I thought you’d run a mile. You can’t say heroin without everyone’s reaction being junky. Which of course, is entirely correct.” She offers a little laugh, looks at me, and chews on a pendant that hangs around her neck. I don’t know whether to nod or shake my head.

Queue support group promotional sound bite.

“Well, that’s what support groups are for. We’re here for each other. You got a sponsor yet?”

“Yeah, a lady called Martha. She’s lovely. We go to a couple of meetings together and she’s taking me through the steps.”

There’s a momentary lull in the conversation and I look up at the night sky.

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“What’s it like? Doing heroin, I mean” I say.

“It’s the stillness you know…..”

I wait for the end of the sentence that never comes.

She gets a little Joss stick from her bag, pushes it into the ground, lights it, and lays back and looks at the sky. The smoke drifts across us in the cold evening air.

“It’s magnolia.” She says.

“What?”

“The incense stick. It’s magnolia.”

I sniff at the air, “So that’s what magnolia smells like then?”

“Not sure, never smelt a real one, but I like it.” She smiles and there’s another pause in the conversation. “It’s the only thing I have left of my mum now”. Her voice trembles momentarily before she takes a deep inhalation, and finds her rhythm once again. “She used to burn them. Said it helped her relax. It always makes me think of her.”

Guilt holds me in its all-consuming way, as I think about how I basically try to avoid my family and loved ones at every possible turn. And then there’s this girl, sitting right in front of me, totally alone, ravaged by death, addiction, and abuse, and all she has left is the tiny glowing ember of a Joss stick to remind her of a love she used to have. I look down at the stick protruding from the dirt, and watch the rising smoke delicately hang on the breeze around us, and I promise myself, I will call my parents tomorrow.

“I burn it to feel close to her. To feel safe.” She pauses. “Sometimes it feels like that’s all I’ve got. Oh, sorry, look at me, getting all emotional.” She wipes her eyes.

I know she hurts and I want to tell her that it will all be ok, but will it? Addiction is something you deal with every day for the rest of your life and if you aren’t strong enough to deal with it, well, you lose everyone and everything you ever cared about and eventually, if it is severe enough, it takes your life too. And at that point, death is a blessing. I wonder how close Evie got to that feeling.

We talk some more about our lives, exchanging our own tales of descent into substance fuelled madness and the chaos that ensued. Evie tells me a bit more about her mother. Her worst fear is following her to an early grave and she talks about how she has to stay clean.

“I don’t think I can go through withdrawal again. It just hurts so much. Physically and emotionally” she pauses, “One day I want to have a family.”

“You’ll have one. I promise.”

“You think? What decent man wants a junky?”

Her vacuous sense of self has totally consumed any belief that someone could love her. But she’s wrong.

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The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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It has been five days and 11 hours, from when his heart beat its last, and I’ve felt every last moment, right down to the second. The constant shuddering memory of his blood-soaked body painfully jars in my minds eye and, though my stare is empty, I am intently focussed on what I’ve done. The stabbing sense of guilt I feel only intensifies as time ticks on. My desire to avoid justice violates everything that I believe in. Religion is not something I’ve ever given much thought to really, but now I feel the eyes of God burning down on me. I can’t live like this. So, it’s either come clean and throw myself at the mercy of the justice system, or suicide, and I haven’t got the nerve.

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When I eventually do sober up, and drag myself away from the only comfort I have left in the world, I head to the bathroom to take a shower and get ready, stepping over the scales that have long since stopped telling me anything I want to know. I shave, comb my hair, do my teeth, look in the mirror and tell myself it’s time.

As I make my way to the local station, trying to figure out what I’ll say, a boy-racer loudly revs his engine as he speeds past me and I think about traffic accidents, tyre blow-outs, multi car pile-ups, mangled automotive wreckages, failed brake pads and buckled steering columns. Instantly my already frantic heart beat jumps up a gear and my mind starts to play even more unwanted images. 1-2-2-1. Symmetry and order. Order and symmetry. But it’s not working, and the images just get bigger and stronger, and more and more intense, jumping between the vacant stare of his death mask and the blood. There was so much blood. I am trapped, these thoughts are slowly killing me.

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I start counting my steps, focussing as best I can on the rhythm of my trainers against the uneven pavement. I try to think of something totally unrelated and the numbers just go on and on and on. By the time I get to station I have counted 1547 steps. I flick open my box of cigarettes and see that there are three left. Shit! I take a deep breath and look down at it, chattering my teeth. I separate two to one side and one to the other. It’s not three, no, it’s two-plus-one. Two-plus-one.

I guess I have a penchant for the dramatic because I start thinking thoughts like this will be the last time I walk these streets, the last time I’m a free man. Completely forgetting the concepts of innocent until proven guilty and due legal process.

I walk up and down the pavement outside the station, my sweat-soaked t-shirt clinging to my body with an algid embrace, still trying to figure out what to say. I’m over thinking this. Just go in there and say I need to speak to someone about my part in the death of a man on Friday night. I can do that. Come on. I light another cigarette and inhale deeply. Doing this is the right thing to do. I say the words out loud to myself but my voice cracks and breaks under the emotion of the situation.

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The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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I lie here as the sun comes up to displace the dark morning hours and my mind finally floats off somewhere still. I’m not asleep, but I’m not really awake either. I don’t know how long I am like this for but I wish it could last forever. At some point I’m ripped from this haven by the sound of another police siren. Immediately I’m back with the dead man, but the anxiety is real, the panic is real. I peer out of my window onto the streets below, convinced they are coming for me, but still no one comes and my mind turns back to whether or not I can be tied to the crime. I need to get rid of my clothes and the knife so I collect them up in a plastic bag. I look at the blade all bloodied. It is about 6 inches long, with one side serrated. I shudder as I recall how it felt to slam it, right up to the hilt, into the man’s chest. All I can see is the shiny steel sliding into his skin and the crimson tears that fell from it. Then comes the guilt again. That dark, heavy feeling that sits nauseously in my belly.

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How could this happen? Yesterday I was just some guy. Today, well today, I don’t know what I am. Everything changed in just a matter of moments, but everything does. It can all happen in a second. You can fall in love or you can fall apart. You can win and you can lose. Life can be created, and life can be taken away, in the blink of an eye. Your future can change uncontrollably on the whim of chance and the twist of fate.

With nothing to do but sit, and wait for morning, time slows right down to the point where I feel frozen in the moment. Like a single frame on a camera reel. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is an unknown like nothing I have ever experienced before. I can’t live like this.

As a frosty morning breaks, I decide I can’t wait any longer. I have to get rid of the evidence. I put some gloves and a cap on, place the knife into my back-pack with the plastic bag full of my bloodied clothes, and psyche myself up to leave the house, but only after checking the locks, windows, taps, lights, switches and the stove, until it feels right. My heart is pounding. I open the door and step outside. I’m sweating and shaking. Get a fucking grip. I take deep breaths and walk purposefully to the canal. It’s a ten-minute walk but it seems like much longer. I catch glimpses of people in my peripheral vision and I am convinced they know. I pull the peak of my cap down to cover my face and press on. My mind is blitzing. My legs feel like they are going to give way under the burden of murder. The memory of his lifeless body hangs on my conscience. My vision starts to blur so I rub my eyes and try to focus. As I pass people all I can think of is death. Deep breaths. 1-2-2-1.

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Eventually, down by the canal, I find a quiet spot under a bridge, take out the plastic bag and empty the contents into the water, dropping the bag in after it. I quickly take the knife from my back-pack and throw it downstream. I thought I’d feel some sense of relief as it disappears into the dark murky water, like it would set me free, but it doesn’t, and I don’t. If anything, I feel worse. Like the possibility of redemption is swallowed up by the depths as the knife sinks to the bottom. Killer. Murderer. Monster. Evil.

So that’s it. I’ve played my hand. All can do now is to wait and see where the chips fall.

I make my way back to the flat, lie down on my bed, but I can’t relax. Home doesn’t feel safe anymore.

I need this to stop so I reach for a beer. Just one. Just to calm my nerves…..

*****

I’ve been at the bottom of a bottle for four days now. I haven’t been to work, I called in sick but I don’t think they believed me. I haven’t slept. I haven’t thought of anything but death. I know I can’t live with this. Killing is wrong, and now it feels like my soul hides in the shadows. I can’t cope. I just can’t. What made me who I am is slipping away from me and I can’t stop it.

I think of his lifeless gaze. Maybe he was desperate. Maybe his hand was forced. I know nothing about what brought him to the point where he had to resort to violence and robbery. Maybe he had no other option and now he’s dead and the thought that my eyes, the stare of his killer, was the sight that took him to eternity, is sickening.

As every minute ticks by, I can feel the pressure intensify. Cranking up, up, up. It’s like someone’s turning a screw in my head, but the screw is as tight as it can go, and the thread is starting to sheer off. Something has to give, and that something feels like it’s my sanity. When it’s quiet, I swear I can hear the world whispering to me. Killer. Murderer. Monster. Evil. I want to run and hide from it all but I can’t because it’s in me. It’s with me. It is me. The walls are closing in.

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The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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I finally reach my block of flats and thankfully no one is around, so I let myself in. Once inside I go straight to the bathroom and collapse over the toilet. The remaining contents of my stomach immediately erupts, covering the bowl and floor. I repeatedly heave until there’s a pain in my belly and my insides are torn apart. When it finally subsides, I lay on the cold tiled floor, wiping the spittle, vomit and bile from my face.

I feel numb. In total shock. I grit my teeth and shut my eyes with such intensity that I can feel the skin on my face tighten and wrinkle. I try to force my thoughts from my mind but they are all encompassing. Killer. Murderer. Monster. Evil. A man is dead because of me. Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s friend. Somebody’s son. Somebody’s husband. Maybe he is even somebody’s father. I lay here, trembling, for hours. Thinking. Panicking. Seeing him there. I tell myself it was self-defence, but I don’t know if I made the decision to kill him or it was forced on me. I can’t get the image of him, just lying there, knife in his chest, out of my head. The stillness of his vacant eyes. The dirty concrete path, his death bed. And the blood. So much blood. What have I done?

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Finally, laden with the heavy burden of death, I strain to get to my feet and look into the mirror. The same mirror that I look in every morning. But I’m different now. I don’t see the same man that I have been sick of looking at for 24 years. The cut above my eye is starting to swell, my nose is throbbing as blood seeps out of my nostrils and both my eyes are blackening so I grab a towel and hold it to my face. I need to get a grip. I need to pull myself together. I killed a man and I made the decision to run. I have to live with that. He is dead now and I’m alive. But I can’t go to prison.

I strip off my clothes and get in the shower. The hot jets of water wash the blood from my skin and, as the last part of him spirals away down the plughole, I start to think about those forensic documentaries I have spent hours watching. You know the type that report on people being convicted because of a type of blade of grass found on a trainer or a single hair found at a crime scene. DNA, finger prints, skin cells under the fingernails. Did any of my blood get on him? And witnesses? I don’t know. What the fuck happened?

After getting out of the shower and dressed, I collect up everything that I was wearing, including my trainers and bag, and put them in a metal bin. I think about burning it all. I want to. The thought that none of it could ever turn up in an evidence bag marked Exhibit A is comforting. But it’s not practical. So, I settle on the idea of dumping it in the canal tomorrow.

I decide the best thing to do is sleep, but sleep won’t come over me. I keep replaying the evening’s events over and over in my head. Was it self-defence or was it retaliation? Because there is a difference. Killer. Murderer. Monster. Evil. I want sleep. Sleep will free me. Sleep will take me away from all of this. At least for now. I pray for sleep. But the thought that his body is out there, discarded like a piece of trash, haunts me. His loved ones, they don’t know what is coming yet, but they will. That knife cut more just him. Killer. Murderer. Monster. Evil.

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In my room, I pull the blankets over my head, like a small child hiding from the monster under his bed. But there are some monsters you can’t hide from. I don’t sleep. I just lie here wishing that morning would never come. Rain starts to drum on the window and my first thought is that hopefully it will wash away any evidence I may have left at the scene. It’s nearly 5am. It must have been about seven hours now. A body couldn’t lay undiscovered on a London street, on a Friday night for that long.

The police are probably processing the evidence right now. Evidence. That’s all he is now. I picture them trying to piece it together. Marking out the crime scene with the blue and white tape. Swabbing the body for DNA. Taking the statement of the unfortunate bastard that happened to have stumbled onto the horrific scene. Tomorrow is coming. But what comes with it? My mind is still with the dead man and my conscience is in hell. Every time I shut my eyes all I can see is his death mask. I’m so tense. I keep expecting the police to turn up any minute, banging on my door. Every time I hear a siren in the distance, I think it’s over and they’re coming for me, but no one comes. I’m just waiting here for the house of cards to fall.

My conscience swings like a pendulum as my thoughts oscillate between despair that I’ve taken away a life, and fear of being caught and locked away in a prison cell. In my head I see my father lying there. Not moving. I can’t save him. 1-2-2-1. Symmetry. Order. Breathe deeply. I try to focus on my breathing but my head is alight.

I think about my decision to run. Maybe I ran because somewhere deep down inside of me I know it was not self-defence. He brought violence to me and I returned it in kind. Killer. Murderer. Monster. Evil.

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The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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His words sharp as darts and frenziedly tempered. Throbbing purple veins bulge out of his forehead, barely contained under sickly skin, pulled tort against bone.

“Wh- wh- what?” I stammer. Fear rises up in me as my heart starts to pound. Instinctively, I back away.

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“You fuckin’ deaf? Give me your fuckin’ phone and your fuckin’ wallet right now! Give me that shit or you’re fuckin’ dead!”

This time his voice explodes in an onslaught of unbridled aggression and my soul flinches at the assault of every fuming word that rips out of his snarling mouth.

“Look man, I don’t have any money. Honestly, I don’t.”

I look into his eyes, but his eyes are crazy.

“You’re fuckin’ lying.”

More belligerent words bawl from his mouth as he pulls a knife. In the briefest of seconds, I see its steel blade glint in the moonlight, and an ice-cold chill of terror fills my chest, as a flash of panic rips through me, the same way lightening tares at the night sky. My body is flooded with adrenalin. All my senses are on overdrive. It is a moment’s overdose and I react. I have no conscious thoughts, I just run. I don’t look back. But my stomach-full-of-fried-chicken lets me down and, within seconds, he’s on me, grabbing hold of my shirt and tearing at the collar. I spin around and make a grab for the knife. It’s instinctive. My fingers lock around his. Whatever happens I know I have to hang on to that knife. I know this like I know nothing else, and I believe it like I have never believed in a single thing before. One truth. If he gets it free there is only one place it is going; the wild look in his eyes tells me that in unflinching clarity.

His free hand lands a punch right on my eye and my vision shudders, but I hold on. He slams forward with a head butt straight into my nose. I hear a crunch, feel a shooting pain and my eyes fill with water as I fall backwards. But still I refuse to let go. All the apathy in the world couldn’t curb my survival instinct. As I collapse to the ground, I pull him down with me.

I guess it is an involuntary reaction to brace himself for the fall, but as his hand comes out in front of him, the weapon drops to the ground. We both collapse but, in an instant, I am scrambling for the blade. I pick it up and turn towards him and an anger erupts inside of me. Anger at the world for existing this way. Anger at myself for being such a victim. And anger at this bastard who thought he could just bully, intimidate and beat what is mine out of me and simply take it because he wanted too.

He clambers to his feet. It’s me or him. The person I am now, in this moment, is no longer recognisable as the perpetual under-achiever in the shitty sales job. Neither am I the man staring dispassionately out of the photograph in the unused gym card that I keep in my wallet to reassure myself that one day I will, in fact, lose weight. Nor am I the husband whose wife so easily walked away from him. I am none of these men. I am someone else. Someone else entirely, and I go for him swinging the blade wildly.

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Even through bone and cartilage, the knife easily perforates his chest and I see panic in his eyes. Blood spurts out and on to my hand, up may arm and over my shirt. That arrogance, anger, and hate dissipates in an instant as he realises what is happening and what’s coming. Now the fear is his. I won’t ever forget that look. Blood gargles in his throat and he coughs a few times, spraying it over my face. I feel like I’m going to vomit. Then he falls backwards with the knife lodged in his chest as I step away. Blood everywhere. Panic all over his face. He knows death is coming and soon a stillness glazes over his eyes, as whatever made this man who he is, leaves his body. Then it’s all over. Just like that. So quickly. He’s gone. I breathe.

I stand there, shaking in total shock, adrenalin coursing through my body. The horror of the whole situation gradually seeping in. I wipe the blood from my face and stare at it, then back at him. And that’s when it hits me, harder than any blow he landed. A whole new type of panic. The gravity of the situation. The full force of reality. I’ve killed a man. I’ve snuffed out a life. You don’t just walk away from shit like this. There are consequences. There are police. Punishment. Prison. But this was self-defence. I was protecting myself.

I look down at his body, the knife protruding from his rib cage. There is a huge amount of blood all over the pavement. In his death throes, the look of horror captured on his face is haunting. This doesn’t look like self-defence. This looks like an attack. A vicious and brutal attack. In that moment I make a snap decision. I look around. The street is dark and I can’t see anyone. My finger prints are all over the knife so I kneel down and pull out the blade. The sound it makes, as I pull it free, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I immediately hide it in my bag and run. I run as fast as I can until I can’t breathe and then I run some more. My muscles burn as they quickly fill with lactic acid, but I won’t stop. I can’t stop. As every footstep slams through me I know what I have done is wrong.

The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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I walk out the office doors to a bitingly cold February evening, after a particularly draining late shift, with the incessant buzzing of the panel lighting still humming in my ears and my glazed, obsidian eyes stinging from the hours spent gawping at the constant glare of a computer screen. Wrapping my jacket tightly around my body, I stare at the cold London skyline and look forward to my weekend ahead of doing absolutely nothing.

“You fancy a pint, Frank?” Connor mutters, his voice tired, cold and without even the slightest murmur of inflection. He, like I, has fallen into a listless existence. I know Connor through work and, though I’d call him a mate, our friendship has never managed to transcend the pub.

“Ah, no mate. Trying to knock it on the head again” I say, my speech equally monotonic, rendered tired and stale in the way only a telesales job can.

I go through stages of time when I want to get my head straight and try to figure out exactly where I’m headed in life. These moments of clarity are usually immediately preceded by finding out some nugget of information about how Danielle, that’s my ex-wife, is settling into post-married life as a young, liberated divorcee, so happily, and today is no exception. She just gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, baby boy with her new partner. I know this because Facebook knows this. We divorced over two years ago after she decided our marriage didn’t fit with her Vogue magazine template for happiness. We’d got married young. Too young, or so everyone told us, and as it turned out, everyone was right. I was 20 and Danielle was 19 and we were in love. We were naive, but we were definitely in love. I adored her. So, when she had gotten pregnant, it seemed less like this crazy leap of faith, and more like the right thing to do, so we had gotten married. But Danielle miscarried and everything changed after that. I started drinking more and she found herself in a marriage that didn’t give her what she needed. We were divorced within two years. I think it’s the silence that hurts me most.

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I fell apart after that. Big style. It wasn’t pretty and, though now I have been able to accept it, I suppose I haven’t really moved on. I’m caught in an empty loop of what might have been. That thought is always there, subject to fluctuations in intensity, but always there. Like the cognitive equivalent of ringing in the ears. Yeah, what might have been is a tough pill to swallow and one that invariably gets stuck in your throat.

Giving up drinking has always been the key to sorting myself out and, though this has been evident enough through the years, I can never seem to stick to it. The feeling of apathy, that I have come to rely upon so heavily, since potential melted into mediocrity and ambition gave way to routine, keeps me stuck in an almost metronomic swing between recovery and relapse. The desire to do things differently, without the conviction to see it through. This sense of apathy hangs like a thick smog in my brain, choking my desire to live a different life, rendering it infirm. It doesn’t take a genius, or even vaguely enlightened mind, to see, I need to break this cycle. Cut through the veil that keeps what should be from what is. This, however, is easier said than done, being that I take a daily prescriptive dose of apathy, with a glass of water, every morning, after breakfast: Paroxetine, trade name Seroxat. It’s a chemical attempt to curb my intrusive mind. I ritualise a lot. Count in my head. Symmetry provides relief. It’s exhausting at times. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention, a big one for me, I have a persistent fear of the number three and do anything I can to avoid it. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either.

“Really?” Connor says, adding disappointment to his already languid cadence, “Giving up drinking? Okay, well, good luck with that.” His tone sardonic.

I pause as we stare at each other over an imaginary line, “Well, I’m heading that way, so I’ll walk with you”.

Without the aid of alcohol, our conversation is stiff, terse and punctuated by lengthy silences. Once we get to the pub, I can’t help but look in. The place looks buzzing and I know in a few beers time, I could be heading that way too. I can feel myself gazing at the taps on the bar like a kid at the window of a sweet shop. My problem with alcohol is knowing when to stop, that is to say, I don’t, and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t a big factor in Danielle leaving me.

Connor guiltily kicks at one of a dozen empty laughing gas canisters that lay discarded on the roadside, glinting delicately in the paling light. He knows that he probably shouldn’t try to tempt me but I guess he’s scared of the silence.

“You sure you don’t want to come in?”

I pause and look at him with as much conviction as I can muster, “No mate, I’m going to pass.”

“Okay, well if you change your mind, you know where I am”.

“Ta, but I won’t.”

As I turn to walk away, I already rue my decision to leave, thinking only about the night I’m leaving behind. One last time flashing neon in my head.

After making my way through the bustling station, I jump on the tube, pick up one of the many copies of The Metro that lay about the carriage and read an article about gang violence as we hurtle through the underground tunnels towards Mile End. Outside the station, I immediately indulge my aggressive need to consume, buying four pieces of chicken, chips, onion rings and two cokes. Grease covers my lips and fingers, as I eagerly stuff big handfuls into my mouth, washing it down with huge swigs of drink.

I’m pretty sure that’s the root of all my problems; my desire to binge and an inability to control it. I do it with everything; food, obviously. Alcohol- my broken marriage is a testament to that. Even sleep. With nothing to get up for, I’ve been known to sleep away entire weekends. Even more if I’m hung over. And every time I’ve got into drugs, I had a tendency to chase the high down a rabbit hole until I collapse in the darkness.

My mind turns back to Danielle. I don’t begrudge her happiness, I really don’t. She deserves it. I suppose I’m just jealous. I want what she has got. Happiness, love, a family. I could nicely settle into a life like that. I look to the sky, remember why I’m doing the whole sobriety thing again, and will myself to get my sober head on the pillow tonight. It’ll be a win. That’s what they say.

I walk past an old beat-up phone box on Eric Street, plastered with hand-written stickers offering massages, complete with a mobile number, and wonder whose life is on the other end of that number. Suddenly my shit job doesn’t seem so bad either. I think about this as I meander my way through various side roads towards my flat, past rows of tired houses, with stains from the polluted London air scaling the brickwork. Past the row of cigarette shops, tags and postcodes daubed on their weathered fronts. Past the gangs of boys that sell their weed on the street corner.

A plane passes overhead following its flight path into City Airport and, as it comes into my line of sight, all I can think of is mechanical failure, hijackings, explosive devices, pilot error, suicide bombers, a sudden loss in cabin pressure, and those oxygen masks dropping from the overhead containers. My pulse starts to accelerate as the thoughts run unchecked. I need to calm down. I need to get a grip. I recite symmetrical patterns of numbers over and over until I get a hold of myself. 1-2-2-1, 2-1-1-2, 2-1-1-2, 1-2-2-1. I get caught up in this circle of thoughts and lose a few minutes, at which point I become aware of a presence over my shoulder walking behind me. I instinctively turn to look, coming face-to-face with this pasty-faced, skinny guy, hair swept back, steeped in sweat. In the dimming evening light, he looks even more despairing than he otherwise might, stricken of hope. We stare directly at each other for the briefest of moments. I don’t know whether it’s the look of desperation in his deep sunken eyes or the way he holds himself but I can feel violence in the air.

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The next instalment of Magnolia Burning is available here:

If you liked this and want to read all of Magnolia Burning please subscribe for updates on when I will be making it available in book and Kindle form.

If you want to read some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy here.

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You may have even read some of my first novel, Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown, the first excerpt of which I released here. Just knowing that lights me up more than you’ll ever know. Thank you.

But here’s the honest bit. Default Setting seems old to me now. I wrote it a long time ago, and while I’m still glad it exists, I’ve now finished a new book that I think is much stronger. Something I’m genuinely proud of in a way I never quite was with the first one.

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So here it is. It’s called Magnolia Burning, and the first part lands on Substack on Tuesday (1st September 2026). Like Default Setting, I’ll be releasing it in extracts, one a week, on Tuesdays, with each part accompanied with my usual comic book illustrations.

A few of you got in touch after Default Setting to say how much you liked seeing the characters rendered that way, and I loved the feeling it gave the piece too. I’ve spent time working with software again, sitting with what my new characters look like, and I’m pleased you’ll get to see them for the first time below. It makes the whole thing feel a good deal more real to me.

So, what’s Magnolia Burning all about?

The story

It’s about three Londoners, one night, that none of them walk away from unchanged. It starts with a single act of violence that drags them into each other’s orbit whether they asked for it or not.

Each of them ends up backed into the same corner, forced to answer the same impossible question: how far would you go, in the name of love, justice, or simply staying alive, before you become the very thing you were afraid of?

You’ll meet each of them in turn, one story at a time, and only gradually understand how close they’ve actually been standing to one another the whole time.

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The idea behind it

Magnolia Burning explores three narratives that look entirely unconnected on the surface but underneath, are actually tightly woven together.

It happens more often than we probably realise, if you think about it. A decision made in one person’s story quietly becomes the wreckage in someone else’s. Something that looks like a footnote from one character’s side of things might be the whole plot from someone else’s. I couldn’t let that idea go.

That’s really what the book is about, how people talk themselves into the things they do. None of my three main characters think they’re the villain. Love turns into possession without anyone noticing the moment it happened. Justice turns into vengeance the same way. And survival, when it’s desperate enough, always finds someone else to hand the bill to.

Let introduce you to them...

Frank Bowden, 24 (Part One)

Frank has spent his whole life negotiating with his own mind with his OCD keeping him locked in careful, controlled routines. Then one chance encounter forces his hand, and something in him gives way. He learns fast that the first line you cross is the hardest. After that, they get easier. Frighteningly easier. And there’s a point past which the man he was doesn’t get to come back.

DCI Laret, 62 (Part Two)

Laret used to believe in the job. Grief has since rewired him, and what started as a pursuit of justice has curdled into something closer to obsession. The law starts to look less like a foundation and more like an obstacle. When it can’t give him what he needs, he must decide whether he’s willing to become the kind of man he’s spent his career chasing.

Evie Stillman, 19 (Part Three)

Evie’s trying to outrun addiction and a past that doesn’t stay buried easily. She wants to believe redemption is still on the table for her. The trouble is that the past tends to catch up with the people who run hardest from it.

That’s them, in a nutshell, though a nutshell never quite holds what these three are carrying. I’m fond of all of them and their imperfections that make up their flawed psyches, but I think the one I’m closest to is Frank.

His OCD isn’t something I researched from a distance. If you read my article OCD: The Hijacked Mind about living with it, you’ll know why I wanted to give it to him specifically. I wanted to write about something I really understood from the inside, something that had shaped me. They always say write what you know – and so I did.

As well as posting Magnolia Burning in instalments, I’ll still be slipping in a few regular articles about my usual musings on life and whatever’s moving me that week. Is there anything you’d like me to write about? I tend to gravitate toward mental health and OCD, addiction and self-destruction, masculinity and vulnerability, loneliness and urban isolation, and writing and creativity as a survival mechanism.

Thank you for reading this far, and for sticking with me through Default Setting and everything since. It means more than I can really say.

I think Magnolia Burning is the best thing I’ve written, and I can’t wait for you to read it. I’ve never been more nervous to put something out there!

They say everyone’s got one book in them. I wanted to know if I had two.

Tuesday, you tell me!

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I released my novella Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown here on Substack in parts earlier this year (if you’re new to my page part one starts here) and it’s now available to buy on Kindle and paperback.

BUY ON KINDLE HERE (£3.99)

BUY ON PAPERBACK HERE (£8.99)

If you’ve been with this from the start, reading my protagonist Edward stumble chapter by chapter, collecting prescriptions and disorders like other people collect hobbies, thank you. You already know the story. This is just the bit where you can put it on a shelf, or hand it to someone who refuses to read things on a screen, or leave it face-up on a coffee table to seem interesting.

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Here’s what I learned getting it onto Amazon, because nobody tells you any of this until you’re three tabs deep at 1am wondering why your spine text won’t sit straight.

The tool: Amazon KDP

I used Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, which lets you self-publish Kindle, paperback, and hardback editions. There’s a genuinely huge help section covering the actual mechanics, so I’m not going to walk through every click here, it’s mostly intuitive. It just takes considerably longer than you think it will.

If you want to review a sample (recommended), then the whole process takes between 4 days and a week - and that’s assuming you’re happy with the first sample. You may be able to do it quicker but that’s what it took me - mainly as I obsessed over things like designing the cover the layout.

The preliminary bits

Before any of the design work, there’s a set of book details to fill out: language, primary marketplace (I went with.co.uk as I’m based in the UK), categories, and keywords etc. Since you know your book better than anyone, I won’t tell you how to do this. I will say it’s worth doing properly and not rushing, since it’s what helps people find the thing once it’s live. Use as many categories as you can that are genuinely relevant and when in doubt go with the recommended option.

Creating the cover

Covers are far more achievable now than they used to be, thanks to AI. By far the best results I got were from ChatGPT. Worth knowing I ended up paying for a month’s subscription, because free-tier edits ran out fast once I started iterating.

I’d already done illustration work for the Substack release. Dark comic book style images that some of you liked, so I picked the one I felt worked best and built the cover around it. There was one shot I kept coming back to: Edward locked out of his own house, from Chapter 3. I’ve always liked that image of him alone, contemplating his own thoughts (it’s currently my Substack profile photo), so it felt like a no brainer that it would form the basis of the book cover too. ChatGPT nailed the design in a handful of passes.

Getting it onto KDP was the fiddlier part. I used their built-in Cover Creator rather than uploading a finished file, even though the whole design was already done elsewhere. I found it gave me more flexibility. If you are uploading it without the Cover Illustrator it needs to be a PDF.

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I picked the plainest template and stripped out all the text boxes, since the design work was already finished. Not necessarily the “correct” way to do it, but it worked.

I went through more than ten versions for the cover to get it to fit Amazon’s Cover Creator template. Spine text smaller. Move this up slightly. Change that. Make this bit more in the style of that bit. It is always fiddlier than you expect.

Leave a generous space around the edges (more than you think you need) since it gives you some wiggle room to fit the design to the page properly. And make sure you leave a gap on the back page near the bottom and the spine where Amazon will add a bar code.

Here’s the final front and back cover (version… at least 10!). Thankyou Chat GPT!

One thing I’d actively avoid: don’t design a visible spine line into your cover image, meaning literal lines or edges meant to mark where the spine sits. In my case the edge of the wall happened to line up with where the spine would but Amazon’s own production process creates the actual spine based on your page count and trim size, and it won’t necessarily line up with wherever you’ve guessed it should go. Let their system handle it.

And worth knowing, a human at Amazon actually reviews the upload. It’s not purely automated.

Uploading the manuscript

This part needs proper attention too, margins, spacing, page breaks, all worth checking carefully rather than just glancing over.

What worked for me: ask an AI for standard book margin sizes, apply them in Word, and put a page break after every chapter. I went with 1.5 line spacing (it looked better on the page), cream paper, 5” x 8” trim, gloss cover, Garamond font at size 16. None of that is gospel, it’s just what suited this book.

One genuinely useful trick: when you launch KDP’s previewer there’s an option to “Have us try to scale your file to match your book’s trim size.” Click on that. That single setting solved more formatting headaches than anything else I did.

Flick through the entire book on screen before you approve anything. Check every chapter starts the same number of lines down from the top, I did 5 or 6 spaces down on each one. And this is exactly why the page break after every chapter matters: if you end up nudging something down by a line, it only shifts the text within that chapter, not the whole book. Without the breaks, one small adjustment early on can ripple through everything after it.

And make sure you add a few blank pages at the start and end of the book like you get in all books.

Ordering a proof copy

I would definitely do this. It’s a few pounds. I ordered one, wasn’t happy with it – so went back and made more tweaks, then got a second one that I was happy with. They take about 3-4 days to arrive so factor that into your time line.

Getting a proof copy taught me more than any amount of on-screen previewing. Line spacing that looked fine on a monitor didn’t quite work in the hand. The cover text wasn’t as centred as I’d thought. None of it registered until I was holding the actual book. If you’re the type to overthink and re-check everything (and I definitely am, check out my post on living with OCD) this step is not optional.

Setting up an author page on Amazon

Not essential but I’ve got more books planned, so it made sense to have a proper home for them rather than treating this as a one-off. Here’s my page.

Drafting text for your cover(s)

This is worth getting right as it will appear on the back cover as well as in the Kindle store and on Amazon’s page when people are ordering a paper back.

I lead with a question to hook the reader – and settled on the final text below

For endorsements, Default Setting was previously featured in Shortlist Magazine, so I pulled a quote from that coverage. But there are book blogs out there actively reviewing independent titles, and if you can get even one endorsement, it does a lot of work toward making a self-published book look and feel professional. I also know the writer Graham Hurley, through a mutual friend, and asked him directly for a quote. Thankfully he said yes.

There’s something quietly liberating about realising you can just make your writing available to everyone. I say make the thing, put it out into the world, and let it find whoever it’s meant to find. I don’t think a book needs a huge audience to be worth writing. It needs the right one, people who actually get something from it. That’s always been the whole point, for me.

I’m genuinely pleased to finally have this out there in a form you can hold. If you read it back when it was going out chapter by chapter, or you’re picking it up fresh now, I’d love to know what you think.

You can buy Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown on Kindle here and on paperback here

Thanks for reading.

Will (and my faithful doggo friend) Rafferty

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Everyone who knew Suzie, in some way, been changed by her murder. I have spent my life drowning in its undertow, plagued by the sense that it could have been stopped. But after reading Luke Bennett’s file, for the first time in years, I saw a way out. A way to restore balance. I had come full-circle. No longer the boy who was unable to act to prevent the unspeakable, but now a man who can stop it happening all over again. A man who can protect another family, another community, another innocent life, from experiencing the same pain and horror that played out on Barkley Row. Only a person who stands outside the confines of law, untethered by consequence, and willing to be cast as the villain, can prevent such an evil from repeating itself. And evil, once again, has a name. This time, its name is Luke Bennett.

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Like Zakariah Finch before him, Luke Bennett stands openly and unashamedly before the eyes of the world, courting malice, defined by iniquity, acting on impulse, with no regard for consequence. I could not stand by, shackled and restrained by societal norms, rendered inert by the morally acceptable, and watch another tragedy play out to its obviously predictable end. Malevolence took away the life of an innocent, and now I had to become it to stop it happening again. Even the brightest stars in the sky need darkness to shine.

Bennett’s file contained his contact details, so I spent a week or so, waiting in the wings, just watching. Observing. Getting to know his routine. He was unemployed. He didn’t appear to have many friends, and his interactions with others were minimal. He spent his time meeting a parole officer, attending appointments, down the pub, or alone in his flat, which was a ramshackle ground floor place, a few miles from where I was living. The security was non-existent and it didn’t take much to force a window.

Even on the night when I found myself standing, in his bedroom, over his sleeping body, I never experienced a single moment of doubt. I just thought about Suzie. I thought again about how everyone could see the danger in Zakariah, and how I saw, so clearly, that same danger in Bennett. And I thought about how many lives would have never been destroyed had someone had the courage to do then, what I was about to do now.

With one swift blow of a hammer to his head, he was incapacitated. He was a big bloke, so moving his unconscious body and tying it to a chair was no mean feat. But I managed it. I had to. I did consider putting him out of his misery there and then, but he needed to know the sacrifice he was making. He needed to understand why he had been chosen.

As he sat limp, and unconscious, tied to a chair in his bedroom, I stared out the window into the night sky and thought about the world at large. I thought about how one act can change everything for so many, and knew that there were lives, out there somewhere, who would not be decimated by evil, purely on the basis of my actions tonight. There would be one less threat in the world. One less person whose sole purpose was to inflict pain.

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After about twenty minutes of sitting, watching and waiting, he started to come round. His eyes initially rolling in his head before they eventually focussed on me. The last person they would ever focus on. That was a beautiful moment. Knowing those eyes would never be given the opportunity to stare down at innocent victim.

Blood from his head wound had run down the side of his face and begun to pool on the carpet at his feet. He tried to say something, but with a sock gaffer taped in his mouth, his words were senseless.

“Don’t worry” I said to him in a gentle tone, “all will become clear, in good time.”

His eyes widened and he struggled in his chair. Though the sounds coming from him were inaudible, his eyes told me everything. An arrogant and vengeful stare. Cold like the killer he would no doubt become one day, should I have allowed it.

“I guess you want to know what the hell is happening, huh?”

I got down to his level and stared deep into his eyes, and proceeded to tell him the story of Suzie Clayton and Zakariah Finch. Sweat began to form on his brow and the look in his eyes started to shift from the intense hatred into a genuine fear as he realised what was coming. I spared him no details and took my time. He needed to understand. I told him how I knew him. How I knew all about him. About his past. His criminal behaviour. His escalating and senseless violence. I explained to him clearly and methodically that I knew what he would go on to do, and how society would allow him to. And I told him how I couldn’t.

Slowly, I pulled a blade from my pocket, and as it glinted in the moonlight, I think he finally accepted his fate. As one final act of kindness, and one that he surely would not give to his future victims, I removed the tape from his mouth and pulled out the sock, allowing him the opportunity to speak, for one last time.

After his coughing and spluttering finally subsided, and through rasping gasps, sodden with fear, he managed to get a few words out, “Who…..Who are you?”

I smiled at him, held his stare intently, and calmly answered, “I’m Zakariah Finch.”

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If you liked this and are interested in reading some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy on Kindle here and on paperback here.

Over time, some fade, but the darkest ones become imprinted, destined to play out in both conscious thought and dreams alike. Uncontrolled, unnerving, and unbridled. They rise and fall within us like the tides of the sea. Sometimes calm, understood and in perspective, while at other times, they crash down with such destructive force that we become consumed and totally immersed. Drowning in a thought stuck on repeat. Though we can still see the world from beneath the surface of such haunted memories, it is warped, muted and distorted. Completely out of reach. And with the darkest of memories, even in the calmest of waters, we know a storm is always coming.

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I’ve spent my life trying to leave behind the memories of what happened on Barkley Row, all those years ago. But as fast as I run, or as far as I go, they are always with me. A permanent imprint that endures over space and time. A soul branded by a nightmare. Whenever I close my eyes, I always see those two pictures that flooded the media; sweet little Suzie, full of innocence and hope, and the dead-eyed stare of the boy who took her from this world.

I have built myself a life since the horror of those days. Away from London. Away from the past. I have a job, nothing to write home about, but a regular pay cheque. I’m in a relationship with a wonderful woman called Maria. She’s filled with compassion and empathy, and has, as a successful counsellor, the skillset to help me, if I ever wanted her to. But I have never breathed a word about those days. I keep them locked away in some dark recess of my mind and though they are never far from conscious thought, I just can’t vocalise them. I don’t want those poisoned days to spill into my new life.

Of all the emotions that are irrevocably tied to Barkley Row, the one overriding thought is, why was it allowed to happen? I thought it at the time, and I still think it now, and have never found an answer that sat comfortably with me. Everyone saw what had been growing in Zakariah. As his behaviour and violence escalated, it was obvious that he was heading towards some awful event. It was like watching a car-crash play out on video in slow motion. With the passing of every frame, another opportunity to prevent a tragedy was missed.

I was just a kid when it all happened. I didn’t have it within me to control the monster of Barkley Row. I couldn’t have stopped him. I didn’t know how. But others did. Adults. Parents. The police. Social services. The wider community. They all just watched the birth of a demon, let it grow untethered, and allowed it to play out to its tragic and awful end.

Now, fifteen years on, Zackariah Finch has been released from custody, paroled after only twelve, and he walks anonymously among us. Protected by a meticulously planned, and tax payer funded identity. Hidden behind the aging process that turned the boy into a man. But whatever he tells himself, whatever his bank cards and driving licence say, he is, and always will be, Zakariah Finch. The personification of evil, lurking in the shadows. He could be your friend, your co-worker, or your boss. He could be the man you are meeting from the dating app. Maybe he’s your lover, or even your husband. You wouldn’t know. How much do we know about anyone? Nothing more than they allow us to. What people present as, and who they actually are, rarely align. And in Zakariah’s case, it’s a total disconnect. Governmentally sanctioned to protect a killer at the expense of all those around him.

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Over the years, the question of why everyone failed to act, has grown inside me from an initial youthful observation, right through to a full-blown obsession that constantly gnaws away at me. All the while, knowing that little Suzie would be alive if someone had done something. If someone had done what, by all standards of public-decency and law, is deemed utterly immoral, an innocent little girl is alive. But morality is a sliding scale, defined inherently by your own belief system. And when you have seen, up close and personal, what malevolence and depravity can invoke, when it has been so close to you, part of your world, part of your childhood, that it forever casts a shadow over your life, your base line sense of morality collapses.

As the obsession grew and grew, so did my desire to comprehend. My thirst for understanding drove me to pour over every book in the library on people like Zakariah. I found articles, read research papers, joined online forums, watched documentaries. Any source of knowledge available to me, I devoured it. And there it was, staring me in the face. Staring us all in the face, like an uncomfortable truth that we just can’t bear to look into the eyes of, for fear of compromising our own code of ethics. There is a profound commonality to these people. All the truly evil killers, the most sadistic and vile, they all share similar early life experiences to Zakariah. It is like some morbid right of passage they all went through to become a being absent of the qualities that make us human, and commit acts beyond the bounds of conscience.

As with so many things in life, there was a significant amount of luck involved for me to finally see things clearly. To know what must be done. I guess you could call it an epiphany, of sorts. If my girlfriend hadn’t decided to take a bath at the exact moment that she did, if she hadn’t neglected to lock her laptop screen, if my phone hadn’t been charging in the bedroom and my friend called, the moment could have been lost forever. But these factors combined at precisely the right moment for me to be in the bedroom during the brief window of time, before an idle computer screen automatically locks. In front of me, in that moment, was the answer. On the laptop, were the case files of her clients. All the broken people trying to change. Trying to overcome whatever darkness had clouded their lives, and I couldn’t help myself. I read. I read the private thoughts, darkest secrets, biggest fears and crippling weaknesses of people I didn’t know. People I should have never known.

It didn’t take long before I found the case notes of a 20-year-old man named Luke Bennett and it terrified me. He had recently been released from prison for GBH and one of the requirements of his parole was the compulsory attendance of various psychological therapy sessions. His profile matched Zakariah’s so closely it was like staring into the past. A different person from a different place in a different time, but the same malicious trajectory. The petty crime escalating into full blown violence, the regular thefts, the exclusion from school, the arson, the cruelty to animals, the abusive homelife, the drugs, they were all there. As I did, all those years ago, I knew where it would end. But this time I could stop it. This time I could act. In that moment, I knew exactly what had to be done.

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If you want to read the final instalment of The Boy, it is available here

Sometimes, people come into our lives that change the course of existence forever, opening up parts of us that we would otherwise have never known existed. Life refracted through a prism of circumstance so powerful that what could, and should, have stayed dormant is woken, and we become a person we were never meant to be. For me, that person was a boy named Zakariah Finch.

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My childhood was spent in East London, growing up on an estate called Barkley Row. A place that would later, tragically, become synonymous with the name of Zakariah Finch. Up to the age of 14, Barkley Row was the place I called home. There was a group of us kids, all within a few years in age of each other, that would hang around together. We were brothers. It was us against the world. A family. An inherently dysfunctional one, but none of us were strangers to that dynamic. We were thick as the proverbial thieves. Though it didn’t take long before the proverbial became the literal. I think every single one of us, at some stage or other, had been caught with some stolen item under our t-shirts, trying to make a break for it out of whichever minimart was unlucky enough for us to stumble upon.

We’d play truant from school, stay out all hours of the night, get drunk, and smoke cigarettes whenever we could get our hands on them, but we weren’t bad kids. We were just kids from broken homes that survived on benefits, living in council accommodation, on the fringe of a society that had shown us, in no uncertain terms, that dreams were not meant for people like us. There was an ‘us against the world’ mentality that was engrained within, and that built a community that looked after its own.

Though Zakariah, through proximity of age and location, was part of the group, he always seemed to be on the periphery. On the outside looking in. His dark obsidian eyes held a cold vacant stare, like he was somewhere else entirely. Like he looked upon a different reality to the rest of us and he couldn’t quite comprehend it. There was always something strange about him. Something uncomfortable. Something dark.

Though none of us had it good, Zakariah had it worse. He was the only son of an alcoholic mother and a particularly vicious step-father who seemed to take joy in tormenting him. From a young age he had been ridiculed after his step-father had taken to hanging out his soiled bedsheets on the front gates. He never lived that down, forced to wear it like a scar on his psyche for years and years. After what came to pass, there’s not a single kid on the estate that doesn’t question whether those taunts guided history, or simply punctuated it.

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Zakariah was always getting into fights with the other kids. He had a quick temper and a vicious streak that would see the slightest provocation erupt into a torrent of physical violence. He was always getting caught shop-lifting, giving cause for the police to become regular visitors to his home. This, in turn would, of course, anger his step-father, resulting in the administration of round after round of his own, particularly vicious, brand of corporal punishment.

As he got older, things only got darker, and you could see it in him. It was reflected in his escalating behaviour. Vandalism, arson, drugs, and possession of a blade, were all added to his record. He threatened teachers and was permanently excluded from school. There were even rumours that he had killed his neighbour’s cat. Something evil was growing in him and we all could see it. His vacant stare had twisted into a sinister leer that unnerved anyone who had the misfortune of being caught in its crosshairs. It was only later, when he became what he became, did everyone come to see that stare as prophetic.

That day came on a beautiful, scorching hot, summers afternoon in July, when little Suzie Clayton, the younger sister of one of the boys in the gang, was found dead, behind the community bins. It would later emerge that she had been strangled. Something changed in everybody living on Barkley Row that day. Innocence was ravaged and the pain was real for everyone. It could not be filtered through a TV screen, or rationalised away as something that happens to other people. This was on all our doorsteps and there was nothing we could do. You can’t hide from an evil that’s scarred into the memory of a community. Destined to be a horror that forever hangs over every resident.

What seemed like the world’s media descended onto the estate. For weeks, news teams camped on the roadside in huge vans. Masses of TV equipment were set up on pavements. Photographers would be constantly on the hunt for pictures and, even as children, none of us were deemed to be off limit to approaches by journalists asking for comments. It was a feeding frenzy, and the journalists were starved. It didn’t matter that the community was shattered. It didn’t matter that hearts were broken. They didn’t care that we were struggling to comprehend the loss of an innocent among us. None of it mattered to them. The story needed to be told and they would have their pound of flesh. Still dripping with blood, ideally.

For a long time, the police presence remined huge, as was the intense public scrutiny on the case. Every newspaper, TV screen, and social media field was plastered with Suzie’s picture. The picture of a pretty little girl in a white summer dress, pink bow in her hair, and blue eyes that sparkled with all the things she could have seen and done had her life not been, so cruelly, extinguished. That picture is etched into the soul of the British public, and probably the world, given the intense attention the case got.

It didn’t take long before the police had someone in custody, and though the world would have to wait until after the trial to find out the name and face of the monster that could act with such barbarity, everyone on the estate knew who it was. His absence since the police announced they had a suspect in custody, merely confirmed everyone’s suspicions. Zakariah Finch. With all the warning signs, how did we allow this to happen? And why did little Suzie have to pay for our oversights and inaction, with her life? This thought has stayed with me, ever since the day they found her.

From the first day he was taken in for questioning, Zakariah was held in custody right up to the point of the trial, and no one from the estate ever saw him again. The community tried to move on and forget, but no one really thought that was possible. His name was never spoken. But this refusal to talk about him, seemed to only lend more weight to the evil he brought into the world. He became an unspoken fear. A dark presence that bound everyone together in remorse and guilt. He became the reason why no one could ever really trust their neighbour again. He was why the kids didn’t play out on the estate anymore, and he was the cause the of eery silence that now hung over Barkley Row every evening, from dusk till dawn. He was one of the communities own, and the community had failed to act to prevent all this from happening.

I feel no guilt when I say this, but he should have been put down like a dog before any of this happened. Everyone knew he was bad. Everyone knew something awful would eventually happen with him. I know you cannot punish someone for what they haven’t yet done, but had the community acted on its gut instinct, had people heeded all the warnings and done what would have, at the time, been unthinkable, that beautiful little girl would still be alive, and it would have been the evil that is Zakariah Finch laying cold in the ground. That is a thought that has haunted me every day since.

The case took over a year to come to court and the trial lasted for about three weeks. For all that time his identity was a closely guarded secret, but on the day of the verdict, the judge decided that it was in the interest of the public that the reporting restrictions were lifted and the world learned the name and face of true evil. The photo that was released to the media was an old school picture. His face grinning at the camera while his eyes told a different story. It is that picture of Zakariah that is burned onto my retinas. It is that stare that haunts my nightmares. It is that face that was the last thing that little Suzie saw, and there are some days where I cannot bear that thought.

There was public outrage at the sentence; being 14 years old he would be eligible to apply for parole after only ten years. The world couldn’t cope with that and it only got worse when it was announced that, upon his release, he would be given a new identity to start a new life. The hate for the boy was intense, and rightly so. His parents’ home was constantly attacked and vandalised, and they were abused in the street until they were finally hounded out of London. But even with Zakariah locked away and the family that nurtured his evil driven out, nothing could ever be the same again. Graffiti adorned the walls of the estate, either vilifying Zakariah or paying tribute to Suzie. As soon as the council got round to cleaning it away, it would spring up again. But graffiti or not, it doesn’t make a difference. Everyone carried the memory of it all in their hearts, and it broke some people. The lucky ones got out of the estate, moving away in an attempt to move on, but many weren’t so fortunate and were forced to live in a place indelibly marked by tragedy and haunted by the memory of a monster that someone could have stopped.

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If you want to read the next installment of The Boy, it is available below. Thank you for your support.

I lock eyes with the anxiety-ridden mess that stares, accusingly, back at me from behind the mirror, and I know that it has all been a lie. Mistaking acceptance for identity, I’ve become little more than a puppet, dancing on the strings of other people’s expectations. Every spoken word curated for acceptance and validation. Every action a performance. A manufactured version of a person, scavenged from the facets of the revered, and haphazardly pieced together one by one, have sculpted an identity where authenticity has been replaced by the farcical, and where the walls I put up to protect myself from rejection have become the parameters of my own confinement.

Beneath the suffocating masks I’ve forced upon myself, and crushed under the weight of false identity, there is nothing more than a gaunt, hollow-eyed, ghost. I made myself a stranger, then sat back and watched as the colour slowly drained from me. I exist now on some plain of ambiguity where my life is cast in the shadow of what I thought was expected. I am anything you want me to be, yet simultaneously, nothing at all. Void of substance, character, and soul. An empty vessel.

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I look deep into the eyes of my own despondence, trying to pinpoint the exact moment when the person became the persona. Likely rooted in the vulnerabilities of adolescence, where clothes, style, tastes, interests, abilities and preferences dictated our place within in an economy of acceptance, and where one wrong step invoked banishment to the doldrums of youth culture. Then, later, fused and compounded within an adulthood dictated by a social currency in which all my assets are counterfeit.

For all my motivations, for all my reasons, this hiatus of self was all for nothing. For less than nothing. The caricature that I concocted melted into the background, the responses tailored to the feelings of others fell on deaf ears, and deference was met with indifference. All I succeeded in was finding was an alternative path to everything I tried so desperately to avoid. Respect, belonging, and loyalty are concepts just as fictional as the masks I wore.

The real me, the one I exiled, is lost, and the persona that was supposed to protect, only manages to exist on the periphery. All I am left with is anger. It swells and throbs inside me with the inevitability of a sunrise. It’s tarred on my skin, pumps through my veins, clogs my arteries and destroys my heart. It’s imbedded within synaptic clips and muscle contortions. It’s in every time I excused the behaviour of others because of a self-engrained belief that I’m worth nothing more. It’s in my apologies for existing, interpreting my very being as an unwanted infliction the world it didn’t ask for or deserve. It’s within the emotions I buried and responses I filtered to fit a narrative that didn’t even consider me. It’s in everything.

I thought I was angry at everyone and everything, but how can I hate the world for responding to no one with nothing? It is not the fault of people for being blind to the invisible man. What isn’t even there cannot be overseen.

Collapsing on my sofa, amidst the discarded takeaway boxes that still contain the remnants of the deep-fired, calorie-laden diet that has come to be a staple of my routine, I stare at the ceiling and light a cigarette. Who the fuck am I? And where do I belong? All I know is that I am none of the identities I’ve concocted, and belong nowhere that I’ve been. Peace can only come once my mendacious existence falls like a house of cards in the wind, but unpicking a weave of lies built on a bedrock of deceit, inevitably leads to collapse. Some foundations are so rotten that renovation is no longer an option. Only destruction. But, after all, revolution only comes with the fall of the regime. So, I’ll burn it all down, and if I choke on the ashes, then so be it.

The bleep of the phone brings my attention back to the present. Social media notifications. A simulation of a simulation. I can practically hear my own whiney voice begging for love and acceptance in every crafted image and every scripted comment. This gallery of inauthenticity is the first target in the cross-hairs, and I feel an immediate sense of relief once it’s deleted. The next, my dating profiles. I reread all my sales pitches, words woven from the fundamentally fictitious. I replace the About Me section, carefully crafted by the advice of hundreds of online forums and tutorials, with two simple words, Not Applicable.

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I start to feel a sense of ease that I haven’t felt in decades. Honesty really can set you free. Laying back on the sofa, I smoke the cigarette down to the tab and my eyes come to rest on the framed print of abstract art I have hung on the wall behind my TV. I stare at it, wishing it evoked some kind of excitement in me. Wishing I recognised in it what the Shoreditch Hipster who sold it to me saw. The price was exorbitant. A pretension premium. And I paid it. I fucking paid it! I struggle to my feet and wander over to it and take it off the wall. It sums up everything I hate about myself; a pathetic desire to be the person I think I should be. To gain some kind of artificial respect and acknowledgement from someone who I don’t know, and don’t want to know. In that moment something just snaps in me and I slam it into the floor over and over again, like I’m destroying all the different versions I’ve spent my life pretending to be. Imitations of self.

The frame splinters as shards of glass shoot across the room but I keep going and going and going. Smashing it into the linoleum floor until my hands are bloodied from and torn apart by the broken pieces. I breathe deeply. Blood drips to the floor pooling on its imitation oak surface and I look at the space where the print hung. It is so empty. So, using my bloodied finger, I adorn the eggshell white surface with two words. Ground Zero.

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If you liked this and are interested in reading some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy on Kindle here and on paperback here.

There is no sun. There is no earth. There is no night and there is no day. No form, no matter, no place. There’s no beginning and there’s no end. No distance, boundary or direction. No up and no down. No body or brain, or you, or me. Just vibration, colour and a yearning suspended in an oblivion where existence teeters on the precipice of the abyss, meaning is hidden in shadows cast from nothing onto nowhere, and the concept of time is ineffable. Both surreal and profound, dreamlike yet authentic. Everything just is, and so am I.

The realm blooms and morphs in an effulgence of colour that endlessly unfolds as I flow along iridescent shafts of light that bend, twist and invert. For all the beauty that cascades and flows here, there is an absence. Though I don’t know who I am, what I am, or even if I am, I know there is something else. It’s like the place that memory once occupied, though vacant, still holds the remnants of something different. An innate understanding of a primordial existence. An ache for something missing.

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The spectrum ripples as light refracts and bends, and a sound from the other side of nowhere echoes and reverberates, distorting the harmonic resonance of which I am one. A strange familiarity that pulls at the fibre of a memory that doesn’t exist. Recognition without understanding. Within the glow, embers of darkness soar, flecks of shadow trailing in their wake, and a twisting and turning blackness tracing where they have not yet been. They build and build to the point of frenzy, until they block out all the colour, shrouding the light in shadow, and drowning the beauty in a veil of nothingness and all becomes deathly silent.

The darkness is endless, like there never was anything else. But gradually, oh so gradually, something starts to appear. Broken lines. Distant, faded and fragile. Somehow, I know they mean something. I search whatever I am to find answers for questions unknown, trying to make sense of something I know I am supposed to see. But in a space without limit, where reason is paradoxical, logic has no place.

All I am left with is a yearning that I cannot understand. Nostalgia without memory. And the lines just hang there. Suspended endlessly. But slowly, so very, very slowly, these lines turn to contours, the contours into shapes, and texture and shade drip onto the ethereal canvas. A constellation of shadow and light dances and delicately entwines forming the outline of an emotion and memory flickers. I see a face. The face of a woman. A face I know. The face I built a life with. The face that I love. The face of my wife, and the veil drops in an instant. It all bursts through.

Though she cannot see me, I am transfixed by her. In her tear framed eyes, exists only pain, and her screams tear at me. A phone falls from her hand as she drops to her knees, hunched over a still, pale, lifeless body, surrounded by discarded pill packets and an empty bottle of wine. I remember. I remember it all. The body is mine.

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She pumps at my chest, begging for life to reignite. Between her fear-stricken wails, words stumble and stutter out, “Come on…. Pl…. Please….. Please……” But there is nothing. No movement. No sign of life. As tears stream down her face, I feel her so completely. I feel her fear, her pain, her panic, her confusion, and her deep impending loss. The loss of the life she thought she had. The loss of a love that was meant to last forever.

It tears at her with a brutal and unforgiving savagery as I see it all flash before her eyes. I feel the pain and torment malignantly spread across space and time. Friends and family asking themselves why. Wishing they did something different. Asking themselves how they didn’t see it. I feel the guilt that will hang over them for the rest of their lives, and I am not there to tell them that the guilt is not there’s to bear. But bear it they will. I feel these emotions as if they are my own. They are my own.

Emotions that I have given to all of them in a poisoned moment when I lost sight of everything that mattered. I see the malignant darkness encroach on their existences. Destined to cast any moment of happiness that they will ever experience against the backdrop of a yearning that can never come to pass; reality does not bend to longing; it doesn’t yield to emotion. It is set in stone. I want to take it all back, but that chance has gone now. Some decisions cannot be undone. Some choices are final. My gift to the people that stood by me throughout my darkest times- to destroy their worlds without explanation or compassion.

In that moment there’s a loud knock at the door and she pulls herself to her feet, rushing to answer it. As her frantic footsteps fade, the room momentarily drops into silence. The kind of silence that is irrevocably tied to death, and I’m left there, staring at my body that lies lifeless, cold and grey. Outside the lights of the city sparkle like diamonds adorning the cold and unforgiving world I chose to leave behind. The cold and unforgiving world I chose to leave the love of my life behind in, alone and broken. Her future stolen from her.

Moments later, three paramedics rush the scene. The first drops to his knees, commencing his well-practiced and methodical assessment.

“Mate, can you hear me?” he says as he looks for signs of life. “Mate?” he says again, slapping me across the face.

No response.

Immediately he starts checking for a pulse and breathing as my wife stands close by, still sobbing. Just staring as she watches the trust, love companionship and future she believed in collapse in real-time.

“How long’s he been like this?”

She struggles to get the words out between the tears, “I…….I don’t know. Just got….. just got in.”

“What’s he taken?”

She motions to the pill packets and the empty bottle of wine laying on the floor and the second paramedic scrambles to pick them up.

“Amitriptyline. Possible TCA.”

“Get an IV.”

He nods and immediately tries to find a vein in my arm.

“I got no pulse and he’s not breathing normally. Starting compressions. Check the airway.”

These words cause a cataclysmic shockwave and my wife collapses to the floor.

“Get a monitor.”

Another paramedic unpacks equipment from what looks like an oversized briefcase as the first cuts open my T-shirt before they attach the pads. One under my left armpit and the other on my chest.

“You okay?” he says to her as he works away.

She just stays there, motionless, collapsed on the floor, processing everything and nothing all at once. A terrified look in her eyes, like she’s not only staring into the abyss, but the abyss is staring right back into her.

Once the monitor is properly attached and turned on, the screen comes to life with violent and irregular squiggles.

“Analysing rhythm…….. We got VF, shock advised.”

“Ok, stand back everyone, shock him.”

“Charging. All clear.”

He hits a button.

A bolt of lightning tears through this place, and as thunder claps, I feel an intense pain. After a seemingly eternal absence of any physical sensation, my first reaction is one of shock; I cannot comprehend it. Then comes the burn. A slow burn that crescendos to an all-encompassing torture.

Immediately he is back pumping at my chest.

Amid the chaos and fear, comes the gentle hum of distant sounds, like the sweetest melody amidst an inferno. All calm. All beautiful. All happy. Images of sweet memories fill the room, covering every surface, like a tapestry of love veiling a nightmare. Though all the sounds come at once, and the imagery entwines, overlaps and morphs, I hear it all. I see it all. I feel it all. I see the pride in my father’s eyes when I came into the world. I feel my mother’s love, relentless and without question or compromise. The soft tone of my grandmother’s voice as she rocked me to sleep, as an infant, swirls and soothes. The good times I spent with friends stare back at me and I know our bond is still there, if only I’d reached for it. The excitement I once felt at the start of each day seems, once again, to be real.

I see the moment I met my wife and feel us falling for each other all over again, and remember that it was only in that moment I really understood what it meant to be truly in love. I see myself helping others, others helping me, genuine acts of empathy, compassion and kindness, and I know I got it wrong; people are not inherently bad. I feel the beauty of art, music and poetry, and understand that there was another way. I see family reunions, birthdays, Christmas’s, happy times and feel the love. I hear it all. I see it all. I feel it all. But my body lies lifeless like a cancer at the centre of everything, and my wife’s tears continue as her heart breaks into a million pieces. Each one forever haunted.

“Ok check again.”

The other paramedic shakes his head.

“Again. Everyone clear.”

Lightening again flashes and everything starts to blur. I can still hear the panicked echoes swirling and spinning, and then comes the pain again. More intense this time, and just as it gets to a peak, there is a stillness where everything stops. Gradually, the twisting and turning luminescent beams return, spinning to infinity. But this time, I am not alone. Within the miasma of everchanging tonal brilliance, I see a silhouetted figure, warped and contorted, beckoning to me. A pull that is inescapable because I am this place, and so is he.

Suddenly, something shifts. Not obviously at first, but in some unquantifiable way. Where there was once vibrance there is now only imitation. The decline continues as what is left of the colour blackens and turns to ash, like grace reduced to torment. Then even the ash corrodes and there is nothing but silence. A silence so long and cold that even the piercing scream, that eventually ruptures this obsidian prism, seems merciful.

The dark figure and I become as one.

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If you liked this and are interested in reading some more of my fiction then please check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy on Kindle here and on paperback here.

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is defined by the NHS UK as being “a mental health condition where a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours”.

While the condition has gradually made its way into public consciousness, often accompanied by stigma and ridicule, there does still appear to be a misconception of what obsessions and compulsions actually are within the sphere of OCD. This is particularly evident to me when I hear someone, half-jokingly, say they are a ‘bit OCD’ about keeping their desk tidy, or claiming they’re having an ‘OCD moment’ when they are focussing intently on completing a task.

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But, obsessing over something, in this sense, is not the same as having your mind hijacked by intrusive thoughts that arrive unbidden, suffused with torment and bedlam. And feeling compelled do something, in the wider societal context of the word, is fundamentally different to having to act out a certain set of behaviours, usually repeatedly, in order to process those thoughts and gain some, usually momentary, sense of calm. Even in 2026, with all the work that has been done around mental health awareness, there remains a genuine lack of understanding. Sadly, however, this is not limited to OCD; it simply reflects a deeply entrenched public misconception of all mental illness.

Before we go any further, I want to caveat the content in this article by stating that I am not an expert on OCD, only on my OCD.

The Thoughts (Obsessions)

I’d like to provide a little context and explanation of what, on a good day are unsettling thoughts, and on a bad day, are outright harrowing ones. While everyone’s experience of the thoughts and obsessions experienced as part of OCD are deeply personal and nuanced, from speaking to others and reading around the subject, there does seem to be some degree of a common thread; bad things happening.

When I say bad things, I mean terrible things; for me, it’s death, disease, accidents, pain, destruction and collapse, and my experience is always centred around such things happening to those I care about. And when those thought-loops come, they run like some kind of morbid show-real in my mind’s eye until I successfully engage in the behaviours (compulsions and rituals) that allow me to process them.

These thoughts can come out of nowhere, but they can also be triggered by what is going on around me. I could be watching something on TV and, if a story about something bad comes on, my mind will often instantly race off down a dark tunnel, placing people I care about in the exact situation. This is anxiety inducing, as you can probably imagine, and the only way to alleviate this anxiety and bring my mind back to rational thought is to act out certain rituals numerous times until it feels right again.

To add another layer of complexity to it all, anxiety in itself, induces more intrusive thoughts. So, it is often possible to get caught in this cycle of having the thought, experiencing anxiety in relation to the thought, which then exacerbates said thought, cueing increased anxiety levels, repeat until, well, I’m sure you can imagine the state one could find themselves in. I feel particularly bad for people who have flown with me as, having a fear of flying, I morph into a distressed, agitated, twitching mess. That is, unless I have access to alcohol and Valium, but that is a story for another time.

The Rituals (Compulsions)

My rituals are time consuming, embarrassing, endless and have constantly evolved and changed throughout my life. I had rituals about touching the ground in a certain way, about turning on and off lights or opening and closing doors with the ‘correct’ image in my head. I have been consumed by not walking on the cracks in the pavement, counting my steps, and saying certain words with the ‘right’ image in my head. If it wasn’t what was deemed to be the right image, I would have to say it again, and again, and again, until it was right. I would spend inordinate amounts of time checking light switches, cookers, taps, locks, windows and anything else you could think to check before leaving home. It even got to the point that checking these things, for sometimes hours on end, was not enough; I started taking videos myself on my phone every day carrying out these checks so I could watch myself back, chasing a feeling of reassurance that could keep me on an even keel.

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I have also had this persistent need to avoid the number 3; not crossing roads by 3 cars, never having 3 of anything, and if anyone ever patted me on the back 3 times, I would somehow have to manufacture a situation where they’d do it again, just to get to 4 or beyond. The fact I can even type the number 3 now is testament to the distance I have come over the years. For a long time, I would have to refer to it at that number or 2+1.

The door checking thing got so bad that, at one point, I actually managed to break the lock on the reinforced front door to my flat, requiring an emergency locksmith and a bill of in excess of £500 to get back in. That was a bad day; I couldn’t go to work. I had to call in, and for a second, I considered being honest about the whole situation. But can you imagine how that conversation would go?

“Hi, it’s Will, I’m really sorry, I can’t come in today.”

“Why not?”

“The front door is broken.”

“What do you mean, the front door is broken?”

“Well, I broke it.”

“You broke your own front door?”

“Yeah, I was checking it, and it broke.”

“How can checking a front door break it?”

“Funny story. I have actually been rigorously checking it by pushing down on the handle every single time I have left the flat, and today, the whole locking mechanism collapsed internally and now I am locked out. I need to get a locksmith.”

“Why are you checking the door to the point that you have broken it?”

“Why? Well, if I don’t, my brain tells me that bad things might happen to the people I care about.”

I didn’t think he was ready to hear that reasoning, and I was absolutely not ready to provide it, so I lied and said I was sick.

One of the worst aspects of the rituals are when they strike in public. Though I am now used to them when they happen, and I have desensitised myself to it all, people’s reactions, even if unintentional, are painful. The ‘what are you doing?’ questions, or the perplexed looks, the laughing, or in the worst cases, the insults; they all hurt; I know what they are thinking. I know what they are thinking because, in those moments when I am not being so kind to myself, I think it too.

Confusion

If all this sounds nonsensical to you, try living it. I know with every fibre of my being that whether I check a door or not, or walk on the cracks, or whatever the current ritual happens to be, it has absolutely no impact on what will happen to anyone, and does not in any way shape future events. But knowing this it makes no difference. It is totally irrelevant. On a mental and emotional level, I guess I am hard wired to react like it does make a difference. As if it is the one truth. Set in stone. A prisoner of convictions that I don’t even believe.

As an adult with OCD, who has completed countless sessions of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and is medicated daily, I have found a way to live with this. The CBT and the medication have done just about enough to take the edge off and I can now live a relatively normal life. But, as child, I had none of these coping mechanisms or treatments.

The onset of my symptoms happened around the age of 12 or 13. I didn’t know what OCD was then. I would be running around having fun and then, bang, into my head pops this image of something terrible happening to a love one, accompanied by an innate and overwhelming sense that this image in my head would come to pass if I didn’t enact some sort of ritual. It happened hundreds of times a day. Even then, I knew it was nonsensical. But that knowledge didn’t change a thing. A war was raging, in my head, and rages still; an irrational sense of the impending doom that I could bring to my loved ones, verses reality, reason and logic. This duality of thought creates a tension that the mind finds unbearable and totally untenable. Sadly, the misguided emotional certainty always wins out over any intellectual awareness. It’s exhausting.

The condition only seemed to worsen over my teenage years and, despite finding out about OCD somewhere along the line, I was never able to vocalise it. It didn’t make sense to me, so how could I even start to try to explain it to another person? I was embarrassed, so I kept it all inside until I was 24 years old, when the constant thoughts and rituals, coupled with the confusion, shame, and the mental exhaustion of trying to manage it all, finally broke me. I fell apart in front of my mother who immediately booked a doctor’s appointment, starting me on my road to finding some semblance of normality. I so sorely wanted to write ‘started me on my road to recovery’, but recovery, at least to me, implies finality- that I have beaten it; that it had been banished from my mind, and my thoughts are be no longer invaded by the intrusive, nonsensical, and relentless. That is not the case; there is to be no recovery, only containment.

Writing

Mental health is a topic that fascinates me, and is one that I have explored a lot in my writing. Largely, in a bid to getting a better understanding of myself, but also, in my own little way, to try to help normalise conversation around, what is still for so many, unspoken. My previous novella, Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown focussed on depression, self-harm and addiction as the driving force behind a man’s actions (If you want to read that, I’ve linked to the opening chapter below).

I am excited to announce that I will be releasing my new novel on Substack in the coming weeks, and there will be lots more information on that coming soon. All I’ll say for now is that one of the central characters lives with OCD. His story explores the texture, rhythm and absurdities of a mind negotiating obsessive thoughts from the inside. Throw in a life-changing event and things get very messy, very quickly. Though the story is fictional, I have drawn a lot on my own experience in creating him, and have grown quite fond of him in the process. I wonder if his life will resonate with anyone else. I would love you to read along as sections are published on Substack twice a week as the story unfolds.

Has anyone had any experience of OCD? Whether that be personal or through a friend or family member, I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading and following my work. It means the world to me.

If you liked this and are interested in reading some of my fiction then check out ‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ - my semi-autobiographical novella about addiction, mental health, and the messy reality of being human. Its available to buy on Kindle here and on paperback here.

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Looking back on a part of my life where psychological collapse, chaos, and terrible decisions shrouded my mind in a monolithic darkness that had me longing for a life that was confined to the past, while simultaneously wishing that same past had never even happened, brings with it a whole plethora of emotions. None of them being good, and each etched in remorse.

Many people who have read Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown have kindly reached out to me, commending me on my bravery and courage for sharing such a personal story and exposing my vulnerabilities to anyone who cares to read them, and I can say honestly, hand on heart, I am forever grateful to those individuals.

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The level of compassion, understanding and empathy that I have been afforded is way beyond what I either expected or deserve. But I consider myself neither brave, nor courageous in this endeavour; I am now at a point in my life where I feel that if I am going to be judged, ridiculed or shamed for sharing a story defined by psychological turmoil, then so be it.

I feel like I have worn a mask for most of my life, trying to fit the mould of what I thought other people wanted me to be, to the point that I don’t really know who I am. So, putting out Default Setting in a public forum felt like a step towards not hiding anymore.

The Shame I Still Carry

Though I don’t feel shame or embarrassment about the whole experience in relation to it actually happening (I see it for what I believe it to be: a man at the end of his tether without the appropriate psychological tools at his disposal to manage a situation that was unravelling faster than he could comprehend), shame is something that I do certainly feel when it comes to what I put those close to me through. This is never more poignant than when thinking about my brother.

My Brother

As documented in the novella, we lived together in a place in Mile End, so he was forced to have a front row seat for my total emotional implosion. Now that the sands of time have passed and I have gained perspective on that whole period of my life, I often wonder, was it worse for him?

The constant worry of not knowing where I was or what I was doing, and even if I was going to walk back through the door, must have kept his anxiety levels teetering on a knife edge. Even when we were together, my whole demeanour would have done nothing more than fan the flames of fear. Albeit, the answer to whether it is worse for those close to the individual in turmoil or not is never going to be clear-cut, being nuanced in a complex web of intricacies, I do believe that for at least a significant element of it, the answer would be a resounding yes; being seemingly helpless to stop a loved one slip into the abyss is a pain far worse than anything I could have inflicted on myself.

(Where I'd stand every morning, rehearsing how to look fine)

To compound that, he tried, he tried so very hard, time and time again. The number of occasions he sat with me, listened, offered advice, comfort and compassion, was innumerable. He supported me to create schedules to try to get a grip on the situation, found support groups so I could talk to those with similar experiences, drew up diet plans and exercise regimes hoping that the whole healthy body-healthy mind mantra would make a difference.

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He paid for psychiatrists, bought me self-help books, sent me podcasts, and inspirational stories. But all of these intercessory efforts to facilitate a change in me consistently had two things in common. Firstly, they would be met with a positive response where I would say all the right things, agreeing with everything he told me, and promising to give a good go at whatever this week’s intervention was.

In those brief windows of time there would be hope. But secondly, and without exception, that hope would be hijacked by my impulsive pull towards self-destruction as I would quickly revert to type, continuing my downward spiral towards oblivion, seemingly ignoring the advice, and abandoning all his good will. There is one hard, cold and brutal truth that I have learned from this…

You cannot save someone that doesn’t want to be saved. That must come from within.

Are you struggling right now? Or perhaps you’re the one on the other side of it - the brother, the partner, the friend who keeps showing up. If you recognise someone like that in your own life, tell them what they mean to you. Be grateful for them, while you still can. I know I am for mine.

Guilt and Depression

My relationship with depression, whether in the period covered in my novella or otherwise, has always been framed by a strong sense of guilt. I felt it then, in the fleeting moments of clarity that punctuated the chaos, and still feel it now.

With all the horror, war, famine, pain and suffering that exists in the world, how dare I feel depressed? What have I even got to feel depressed about? I have my health, despite working so hard to destroy it. I have a loving family and close friends. I am lucky enough to live in a country that is not being decimated by war or famine, and affords me all the rights, freedoms and opportunities that I could possibly desire.

(Where I stayed for ten nights, see chapters 12 - 14)

I don’t live in poverty. I received a good education and have never experienced discrimination, abuse nor neglect. Yet, despite all this, I find myself in bouts of depression and self-loathing, and, as Default Setting describes, when I came up against a situation (a personal heartbreak) that, let’s face it, is more than likely to figure at least once in most people’s lives, I responded by repeatedly smashing the self-destruct button like it was a fucking speed-dial.

This is something I have given much thought to and, despite knowing that depression is not something that can be objectively measured against a specific set of circumstances, then applied as some sort of linear scale to quantify the level of pain any given individual will experience, it is still something that sits often with me. These days I try to use that sense of guilt as a motivator to deal with my mental health in a more pragmatic way, focussing on what I can do to manage it, rather than trying to destroy it, and myself in the process.

Relationships Since

Since the dark days described in Default Setting, I’ve been in a couple of relationships. One lasted five years — she’s a great person, and I’m pleased to say we remain friends. In hindsight, those relationships had a much deeper sense of love and connection, and though I have not been in a good place when they ended (I mean, who really is when a meaningful relationship ends?), I have never reacted with such self-directed ferocity.

I suppose a significant amount of it is down to being older now, having more life experience. But being able to look at things a bit more objectively and respond in a more rational way has been fundamental. Plus, there is a further motivation now; I lost a lot of time being in that state of mind, and acting the way I did, and ultimately, did it help? No, it didn’t.

All it did was serve to delay me restarting my life, and the older I get, the more conscious I am that the clock is ticking. For all of us. We get one shot at this life. Spending it wallowing at the bottom of a bottle, or with a bank note shoved up my nose trying to numb a feeling, and escape reality, is not how I want to spend the fleeting time we have.

That is not to say that I think it is easy, far from it, and my heart goes out to anyone stuck in a similar destructive cycle, but my experience has taught me that if I want to get through these periods of time there are definite things I should and should not do. Excessive alcohol and any amount of cocaine fall squarely into the latter category.

Things like confiding in people I trust, trying to eat well, having some kind of creative outlet, exercising, spending time with loved ones and cherishing those relationships are what I reach for now. They are my safety net, and, knowing all too well my capacity for collapse, not having them in place would be akin to living on a fault line without an emergency escape plan.

Though what I have written here is hardly revolutionary, it is the commitment to following it through that is the key, and that is something I am still learning. But one day at a time, right? We are all entitled to fall now and again, it’s not what will define us. What defines us is what we do once we have fallen.

How Close It Came

Gaining perspective on that dark period of my life has definitely been a source of personal growth, however, only now, in retrospect, do I feel a genuine sense of fear about what could have become of me, or even if I still would be. I didn’t think about it at the time, and, if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have cared. But I think it is no exaggeration to say that I came close to it all being over on numerous occasions. It was even said to me by various people that I had a death wish, and maybe I did.

Whether it would have been directly by my own hand, through my consistent abuse of drugs and alcohol, the bad decisions I continuously made, the dubious company I kept, or the situations that I would regularly put myself in, I am sure it is only by the grace of God, or karma, or good-fortune, or luck, or whatever you call that unquantifiable factor that somehow got me through, I am still here at all. Whatever it is, I am truly thankful.

(The skate park on the Southbank at Waterloo, London. Where the story of Default Setting starts)

Though I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it then, it is clear to me now, that, had that eventuality come to pass, it would have been intensely felt throughout the lives of those that genuinely care about me forever. I am not trying to put down, or cast judgement on, those who may have succumbed to such a sad ending, not at all; I know the darkness, I know what it is like to feel like there is no escape from it, I know how we lose sight of the truly important things, and I know, only too well, the pain of an emotional collapse and the overwhelming desire to rid ourselves of it. But, in hindsight, I know that old adage is so true; it really is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Writing as Therapy

Writing Default Setting started out as therapy, nothing more than that. I had been to numerous counsellors, therapists, and psychologists over the years who had all encouraged me to write down how I felt, but I had never actually done it. I’m not sure why I decided to do it on the particular day I did, but it is a decision that I am so happy I took.

I really believe in the power of creative expression to process pain, manage emotions and help restore us to some kind of mental equilibrium, and I would strongly encourage anyone who is suffering to explore it. Whether it be writing, music, painting, sculpture, or anything else you enjoy, there is a restorative power to the creative process that has helped me, and so many others, so much.

Why I’m Sharing It

It is now my hope that by putting it out there, someone may read it and feel like they are not alone in their experience, that it is a part of being human, and that it is ok to share, because I know that seeking the support of others, before things get to the point of crisis, can potentially save lives.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has read and engaged with the story, because as much as making experiences like this public is so important to encouraging others to seek help, it is equally important for those in crisis to see how people respond to such stories, and the response I have been given has been overwhelmingly positive and, for that, I am grateful beyond words.

One More Thing

Before I go, I’d love to hear what you guys thought.

Did you enjoy Default Setting? What stuck with you most? Was there a line, a moment, or a chapter that hit harder than the rest?

Let me know by commenting below.

Thanks, Will

‘Default Setting: A Nervous Breakdown’ is now available to buy on Kindle here and on paperback here.

(Me, June 2026)

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Will has written more about his mental health struggles including his battles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). If you’d like to know more about that then click below..