Rick Rawes

What happens when sleep becomes a luxury – and reality starts to unravel?

So, it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these. Almost since…well, summer. Now, before you get too excited it’s not a brand-new book (that’s still well on track for February 16^th, 2026 – Bastet if you please). Instead, since my relaunch I’ve been steadily working on releasing all the Rick Rawes back catalogue in brand new refreshed paperback glory. I always will enjoy a paperback best. Thus, I’m happy to announce that Insomniac, my first true horror novel, is releasing in a refreshed paperback form just in time for 2025’s spooky season!

WARNING – *mild spoilers ahead for Insomniac (nothing too dramatic, don’t worry, but if you like to go in completely blind…simply go and purchase the book here…)

(see what I did there? Apparently, that’s called marketing)

Insomniac is a bit of an odd duck. It began life many, many moons ago as a story called “All Souls” – actually a movie script in the beginning. It was during the hay day of early 2000s slasher films – all of them blatant rip offs of the slasher films of the 1990s (which in turn were blatant rip offs of the slasher films of the 1980s… you see where this is going…). I could not get enough of them, and the worser the betterer. I would literally sit through an hour and a half of incomprehensible nonsense simply because it starred someone I knew from Buffy. Which led to films such as a confusing story about a car crash (I think?!) with Faith (Soul Survivors), and Anya kicking the ass of an evil tooth fairy a la Darkness Falls.

So in my teens I capitalised on this by writing a story where bunches of characters loosely based on my friends were bumped off unceremoniously by a shadow person – who, in a big twist, turned out to be a Shadow Person from some dark realm and not just a killer in a black onesie. It was awful. I can’t remember who ended up with their face in a blender in the school kitchen, but whoever it was I apologise for the gruesome demise.

There’s almost nothing left of the original DNA of All Souls in what eventually became Insomniac, but a nugget is still there. The central idea of taking a straightforward slasher-esque or Se7en-esque escapade and twisting reality around it into a knot, had a kind of Dusk ‘til Dawn genre bait and switch feeling I couldn’t resist.

Because I was going to go down a route of mashing genres – from a grim and gritty serial killer crime thriller to a psychological reality-bending horror, I also didn’t want traditional heroes. Enter, Liam Harper. A twenty-year-old psychology student, pushed beyond the brink. He is not a hero when we meet him, he is not doing anything in fact other than surviving.

His trauma as a character comes down to the simple truth that behind the veneer of civilised society lies people who have fallen through the cracks. The bright heady lights of student life, is not what is experienced by everyone. Many people struggle with the pressures and mental health impacts of the university light. Exam pressures, home expectations, being one of a thousand nameless faces on a course or in a system that sees you only as a number on a page. Liam broke. Liam started to recover. But when we meet him, you can still see the cracks.

 Then, just as he’s about to re-enter the world, still struggling with the aftereffects of his chronic insomnia and his breakdown…people he once knew begin to die. Horribly, brutally…and it all leads back to him.

There’s a lot of layers and themes in Insomniac, densely packed with it some may say. I like questions, I like provoking – without always giving away easy answers. The Dark Man, Liam’s tormentor – is he real or not? And even if he is real, does that negate the impact on Liam’s mental health? Is he crazy or does that not even matter?

And then there’s the response. Someone is rapidly killing people in brutal ways – and the signs point to a young lad who’s just come out of psychiatric care. When all evidence points to him, is DI Lance Mercer wrong to go so hard after their suspect? Or his tunnel vision a kind of institutional prejudice that makes life so much harder for people with a label of ‘mental health’? What are the lines we can and can’t cross in the pursuit of saving lives?

The world of Liam Harper is a dark and intricate one, where hard truths blend almost inseparably into lived realities – and even the supporting cast are strange, flawed and unique beings that may or may not always be what they appear in the beginning. But, as the story territory grows stranger and ever more terrifying, I want you to bear with me – and know that in the end there is always hope. In darkness, there is often light. In horror, there can be beauty. In sorrow, there can be love.

Insomniac can be read on its own as a scary tale to tell ourselves in the dark. It can make you sad, make you cry, make you afraid all by its own merits. It does connect to the larger worlds I’m building – thus you will see familiar characters and themes running through this first Volume of the New Knights tales. So, if you do like it, maybe give the others a go as well. But if you’re okay with just a bit of horror, and happy with the self-contained story within – then hopefully you will be satisfied by the tale here.

Insomniac will always hold a special place in my heart, a cathartic self-exorcism of difficult times manifested into the life of a character. It reminded me of the power of the genre, not to celebrate darkness, but to honour the light. I will return to horror again, before too long. There’s something intoxicating about the darkness, about the monsters that look just like us. As I sit here writing, I feel my own Dark Man, just out of the corner of my vision, grinning that grin the colour of bone and whispering quietly with gentle promise.

Soon.

Rick Rawes
13^th October 2025
Leeds, West Yorkshire

P.S. Grab your copy of Insomniac now – available in refreshed paperback on Amazon UK, US, and more…