I will be a published author tomorrow.

When I was around fifteen years old, I started suffering from hallucinations. It was mainly at night – weird shadows plastered on my bedroom walls; unknown voices threatening me. I was also deeply depressed and self-harmed often. The lowest moment of it all happened when I poured boiling water onto my right arm, which is still stained with freckles as evidence of missing skin. It led to me being hospitalised for three weeks, and after I was discharged, I had to attend weekly outpatient sessions at Guy’s Hospital, London Bridge.  

This was before the Shard existed, during a time when London Bridge station was a fortress of scaffolding and timber. There was a walkway that overlooked the roads outside the hospital, and every week I would pass a cluster of anoraks as they took photos and shot amateur footage of the building’s construction. Today, you can see the results of this dedicated vigil on YouTube, where countless time-lapse videos narrate the assembly of what is now the tallest skyscraper in Europe.  

For my appointments, I had to go through a series of dark, mossy railway arches to the rear of Guy’s Hospital. A chronic daydreamer, I began to fantasise about something – that during my many walks beneath the shadowy arches, I could press one of the bricks, revealing a chute in the pavement, and descend to an underground city where magical creatures lived. The desperation for that world grew so strong that I did the inevitable: I wrote about it, crafting a teen story about Downstairs. Back then I used to buy expensive notebooks from Paperchase, ones that were embroidered with flowers and had gold sprayed edges, and I fancied myself a big time author and preferred writing entire novels by hand. During those years of adolescence, Downstairs saved me. 

Recently, I was going through some of my notebooks from those years, from when I first started jotting ideas down, retracing the evolution of the story as I grew up and matured the material. To my surprise I saw a character list of familiar names. If you end up buying THE REAPER, just know that Dagwood Somme, Brian Salem, Felix Brown, Dani Balogun, Shaun Forbes, Ulrich Dagger, Josh Rivers-Lee, Bartholomew “Hollow” Walker, and Blythe Mason, were over ten years in the making. 

Gerald, too, existed a long time ago. He was supposed to be a background character of this story, the one who would have been the fan favourite, and although some of his mannerisms have changed, he’s basically the same. Over the years I became a bit obsessed with him, sketching more of his backstory and the quirks of his personality, and I realised he was a protagonist and that he needed his own book. Since getting the publishing deal and receiving much-needed feedback, he has turned into something extraordinary. 

Sometimes I feel anxious when I think about my teenage self, especially those college years. I was so desperate to be an author. I spent my lunchtimes going into Borders bookshop, which had a Starbucks on the top floor, and as I drank my caramel hot chocolate and ate my accompanying brownie, I would sit by the window and write stories in my notebooks, and I would pretend that that was my life, that I was already a thirty-year-old author writing full time and that my days were spent strolling around affluent Angel, lounging in cafes, and scribbling words until I felt bored. After my little delusion sessions, I’d wander around the bookshop and read as many first chapters as I could, measuring my own writing against those far away, already published giants, wondering if I would ever hold my own book in my hands. I thought about being an author every day.  

I really don’t know how this book release will unfold. I don’t know if people will like THE REAPER. I don’t know if it will be a big deal, if it will hit the bestseller lists, if it will be nominated for a Goodreads award, if I will gain a readership, dedicated people who would want to follow Gerald and Amy for the entire course of their story. There are too many unknowns in publishing, and it is a painfully unpredictable industry.  

What I do know is this: I am grateful to be here, and I am happy I lived to see my dream come true.