Writing Gamekeeper's
The story of writing The Gamekeeper’s House goes back to the summer of 2025. Having taken some ‘writing advice’ that completely destroyed the first two books I had published, I unpublished them and almost gave up writing altogether. It was a bad time for a lot of reasons.
Before I started rewriting those two books back to the way they should have been, I thought I would take my mind off those stories and I set about reading as many ghost stories as I could find. I worked my way through classics from Dickens to Henry James, and modern writers of all styles, anything at all. It was a whole mixed bag of styles and plots. Some have almost no story and are simply an indulgence of archaic and atmospheric writing, something that still seems to be immensely popular and makes a refreshing change from current styles. Some are well thought out stories, delivered without frills. It is more varied genre than you might think.
As I worked my way through this eclectic mix, I built up a picture in my mind of what worked for me and what did not, and I started to get itchy fingers. When I picked myself up and started the monumental task of rewriting my first two books, for something positive to put my busy mind to, I started thinking about how I could write a classic ghost story, but not something stuck in a distant past.
I found a lot of those books I had read a bit samey. Themes cropped up again and again, the family that inherits the spooky mansion and for reasons unexplained decides to live there, hidden passageways in walls, secret staircases, things that when you come across them yet again, you sigh.
I would have none of these.
All this was just a jumble of thoughts, not even ideas, until on the 13th December 2025, I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I had finished a project I had been working on, which would take a break until the end of the first week in January. I had less than a month, but I had the Christmas holiday to work through, and I came up with the mad idea of getting a whole book at least roughly written in that time. I would be flat out with work after then, so if I did not get it finished in those three weeks or so, I would probably lose the mental momentum and the ideas in my head, so that became my challenge.
I write on paper using a pencil (which is what I am writing with now), so it is a slower task than just bashing words straight into a keyboard, but it is what works for me. I set aside everything that I didn't absolutely have to do, set an alarm every morning (yes, including Christmas Day), put on the right music, and I wrote. Music is essential to my writing. In another life which I now hardly remember, I was a professional musician, and I have never been able to be without music, so I had music, a pencil, countless pads, and I wrote.
For twenty-three days.
I always thought it was twenty-five, but I just checked, twenty-three days to write a full-length 74,000 word novel. It was an insane thing to do, but it was either that, or not write it at all, so I wrote.
And I loved writing this book.
Until then, Oliver’s Voice had always been my favourite book to write, There is always something special about your first book, but Gamekeeper’s was a whole new experience. Every day, getting my jobs done and out of the way, clearing my desk or the kitchen table, wherever I would write for a few hours, and putting on music, then writing.
Gamekeeper’s and I went through the shortest day together, through Christmas, into the new year. It was intense, and still makes me smile just to think about how utterly nuts it was.
I then slapped it into a cover and sent paperback copies to a couple of people who I trust to read my unfinished work, and I mean unfinished. At that time it didn't even have an ending, just the vague outlines of an ending. Some people will not even think of writing the first words until they have the whole story mappped out in charts and spreadsheets. They plan every chapter, every scene, and know everything about all their characters in minute detail.
I just write and hope I can get the madness out of my head before I lose it. We all have our own ways of doing things, and that is mine. Eight months and five revisions later, with some wonderful help along the way from other writers, and I could feel in my bones that it was finally finished. Writing like this is a bit like creating a sculpture out of stone. You keep working at it, refining the shape, chipping away, then smoothing and polishing until you know it is time to stop.
So that is the story of how I wrote The Gamekeeper's House. While writing this story about that story, I had to have music, so you can thank Arooj Aftab and her hauntingly beautiful album, Vulture Prince. Music was such an important part of getting me through writing Gamekeeper’s that the acknowledgements at the end is almost entirely dedicated to the music I listened to during those twenty-three days.
If you want to find out more, read the full description here.
