Like so much of my work, Voices has its roots in real life events affecting me.

About ten years ago I noticed I had to turn up the TV, and I began to miss snippets of conversation. It was losing my hearing. Turned out it was noise induced. All the rattling trucks and noisy factories/mills I’d worked in over the years had robbed me of a significant part of my hearing (yes, I got compo, but I’m not telling you how much.)

I got used to it, but there were some strange side effects and one of them was hearing the occasional muted voices, as if someone had turned on a TV in the next room, or next door. I could never make out individual voices or words and of course, the moment I put my herring aids in, or I got downstairs into a normal day’s sounds, they disappeared.

I figured it was my brain, so used to hearing background noises especially the TV because Her Indoors is a big fan, that it created the sounds to persuade me that everything was as it should be.

Out of the stemmed the psycho horror/thriller, Voices.

It’s the tale of college lecturer, Chris Deacon who survives a bomb attack from close range only to discover that it has robbed him of his hearing and the ability to speak. As his hearing returns, he begins to hear the same background babble as I do. But he is also haunted by two visible demons, a soldier, whom he christens Big Pistol and a tiny, grotesque dwarf with an oversized head, whom he calls Egghead.

Through the medium of the Voices and the demons Chris begins to suffer strange, premonitions in the form of dreams. His wife Jan tries to calm him, after he sees one of his fellow survivors jumps to her death from a block of flats, and the Voices turn Chris’ attention to losing his wife.

Chris determines to fight back and his struggles lead him to Northumberland and an enigma that is more horrifying than he could dare imagine.

The extract here details a dream of his wife.

A first draft of the novel is complete and undergoing revision. All rights to Voices are available.