'Asylum(s)' is the product of a childhood spent writing Pokemon fan-fiction and having unrestricted access to a copy of ‘The Shining’ at age 11.

This led to a love of genre-fiction and a desensitisation to the creatively macabre. A degree in Creative Writing taught me the rules of the written word, and my brief stint as a writer for an independent comic book company showed me how to break them and still get my work past the editor.

Employment in both BAFTA Cymru and a local lifestyle magazine revealed how uncommon my preferred genre is and showed me that, if I wanted more of the books I loved, I would have to write them myself. Whilst 'Asylum(s)' isn’t the first novel I have written, it is the most genuine example of my tastes and style.

I like to think that ‘Asylum(s)’ does not shy away from its influences, as the story needs to be unapologetic in its descent into the deeper recesses of the genre. The novel is a character study that is both gothic and suburban, horrific and mundane. My created world is a disconnected space that allowed me to experiment with form and structure, permitting me to place my characters into stylised dream-like situations that will hopefully sidestep the expectations of the reader and present them with something new. 

T.G x