Insomniac

Insomniac

A New Knights Novel

A body in the woods. A dark man in the shadows. A world where nightmares walk.

Everyone told him he was crazy.
The worst part? They’re right.
And horrifyingly wrong.

Liam Harper knows what people think, as he prepares to return to university life. Not everyone breaks down in the middle of the day. Not everyone sees their hallucinations make them bleed. Not everyone has chronic insomnia driving them to the brink. So for him, that’s obviously what’s going on – he’s crazy.

Then things begin to change. Bodies begin to drop.

People – with connections to his past – begin to die. Brutal, ritualistic deaths that no sane person would enact. Suspicion begins to fall on him, as DI Lance Mercer decides there are no coincidences. After all, he’s just been released from psychiatric care. After all, he’s no stranger to blood. After all, he’s the crazy one… right?

But the Dark Man is watching.
Angry, vicious, righteous.

Soon, Liam begins to realise his Dark Man may be more than just a product of his fractured mind. As the clues mount and the body count rises, Liam begins to uncover truths that make him question everything – his diagnosis, his life, and even reality itself. Soon he’s awoken to a beautiful and dangerous new world.

One where nightmares walk. And kill.

Insomniac is the dark and twisted world of the psyche made literary. Part crime thriller, part mind-bending descent into psychological horror, it paints an unflinching portrayal of the darkness in our souls. And asks a fundamental question – if your hallucinations are real, how can you tell what is not?

The Soundtrack

Dark, angry and intense. Like that first cup of coffee after a long, sleepless night. This is not a soundtrack to listen with grandma and for good reason. There is nothing wholesome about the descent into madness. Nothing warm and comforting when even narrative breaks down. Just the relentless, overwhelming push towards the void.

The soundtrack does soften slightly at times – as the emotional pull of the darkness settles into a sorrowful lament – while aggressive, metal tunes come in waves – and ending with an almost gentle, cathartic release. This is the kind of track list you listen to before reading. One which gets your nervous system in the right space. But, if you do listen alone in the middle of the night, maybe don’t sit with your back to the door.

You never know who might be peering over your shoulder.

What You’ll Find in This Book

A collision of dreams and reality, where visions, nightmares, and altered consciousness blend into something terrifyingly tangible.
A dark psychological descent exploring insomnia, fractured identity, and the mind’s breaking point.
A shadowy, otherworldly presence stalking the protagonist — which may or may not be a product of his own mind.
Mind‑bending supernatural encounters, blending impossibly with a gritty street-level hunt for a serial killer.
A violent mystery threaded through ritualistic killings, each echoing Liam’s past and mental unravelling.
Themes of psychic connection and dreaming, where sleep may become a doorway to truth—or something far worse.

A Short Excerpt

Click Here for a Snippet

“Dale,” she sighed, “Why couldn’t you piss quickly like a normal human being?”

But ‘Dale’ didn’t answer. He didn’t slow his progression towards her, and he didn’t answer. He just continued to move through the darkness until he was on the edge of the shadow.

“Seriously, if you’re being a dick…”

She didn’t get to finish that threat, didn’t even finish the thought. The dark, humanoid shadow rushed forward with an inhuman swiftness. The shape, the shape was not that of a man, not really but the grip on her arm felt real. In the sudden moonlight, all she could see was the grin. The cold grin of the colour of bone. Everything else was blackness.

There was not enough sentience left in her mind to know if she screamed. She turned and half-ran, half-dived into her tent, closing the zip behind her. As her mind attempted to recover from what she’d seen, she heard the first solitary sound across the constant soft howl of the wind. She heard the slow and deliberate sound of a zip.

Behind the Story

On the surface of it, Insomniac is very different than other novels I’ve written. It’s the night to the other knights’ day. But it was also born out of some very real ideas and struggles. Mental health. We talk about it, but we don’t really talk about it. It’s sanitised, filtered through middle-class lenses and made palatable with bright colours on charity showcases at BBC Breakfast. It’s a segment on This Morning. An ‘it gets better’ platitude. That’s not sitting with it. That’s not honest.

The circumstances of Insomniac are extreme, but touched upon some very real experiences – not just for me but for many who reach that heady time of adulthood known as university. Living away from home, trying to learn how to simply be in the world. For some, it changes us. It challenges us. But not everyone. The Dark Man in this novel is a figment of my imagination, of course, but in another way he is very, very real. He whispers in your ear that you’re not good enough. He watches from the wings when you fail. Guilt. Fear. Sadness. He is them all, and he is none of them.

He isn’t real. But he still says hi.