The Room Under The House
Due for release April 2025.
Due for release on 30th April 2025. Join the subscriber list to keep informed.
The room under the house is not the beginning of Joel's problems ... it might be the end.
Joel Hayward has never been the same since the disappearance of his teen sweetheart, Annie, fifteen years ago. Now a renowned psychologist, he suffers from recurring dreams, panic attacks, and dark depressive episodes. If it hadn’t been for his loyal assistant, Kira Petrova, a brilliant mathematician and PhD, he would have completely fallen apart. But she is unaware of the secret that weighs heavily upon him.
But now he has purchased an old house with secrets of its own. If he thought his problems were already big enough, they just got much bigger. The room under the house he just purchased has untold stories that it’s not about to reveal any time soon. It was only luck that revealed the hidden staircase leading to the secret dungeon-like room deep under the house. Before long, though, he wished he never knew about it.
Kira Petrova does her best to keep him from spiralling out of control, but she is unaware of the things that trouble him the most. Another mystery to torment the deep recesses of his mind is almost too much to bear.
Due for release on 31st October 2024. Join the subscriber list to keep informed.
The room under the house is not the beginning of Joel's problems ... it might be the end.
Joel Hayward has never been the same since the disappearance of his teen sweetheart, Annie, fifteen years ago. Now a renowned psychologist, he suffers from recurring dreams, panic attacks, and dark depressive episodes. If it hadn’t been for his loyal assistant, Kira Petrova, a brilliant mathematician and PhD, he would have completely fallen apart. But she is unaware of the secret that weighs heavily upon him.
But now he has purchased an old house with secrets of its own. If he thought his problems were already big enough, they just got much bigger. The room under the house he just purchased has untold stories that it’s not about to reveal any time soon. It was only luck that revealed the hidden staircase leading to the secret dungeon-like room deep under the house. Before long, though, he wished he never knew about it.
Kira Petrova does her best to keep him from spiralling out of control, but she is unaware of the things that trouble him the most. Another mystery to torment the deep recesses of his mind is almost too much to bear.
The Origins of the Story
As a teenager, I spent many hours on the beach at Black Rock. Those experiences are the inspiration for the start of the story. We would often swim out to the HMVS Cerberus breakwater and climb onto the deck through the corroded hull. You’re not allowed to do that anymore. You probably weren’t allowed to back then, either. We still did, though.
One day, we met a girl on the beach, and we all became friends. We were just a group of youngsters having innocent fun. We’d swim out to the Cerberus, snorkel in the rocky shallows, and sit around on the sand and just talk. We’d arrange to meet her on the beach from time to time, but one day, she never turned up, and we never saw her again. We figured she probably had better things to do than hang around with a bunch of nerdy teenagers like us. She was the inspiration for Joel Hayward’s teen sweetheart, Annie.
Once upon a time...
The book’s title was revised many times. Ultimately, I based it on the room under the house of an old abandoned property we discovered in a nearby suburb. We were petrified the first time we descended into its depths with nothing but a flickering torch. We didn’t go all the way down, and we didn’t make another attempt. That’s how much it scared us. We’d often sit in class at school and wonder what might lurk in the room under the house. But even if the passing of time were to eventually remove the fear of going down there, the decision was taken out of our hands – one day as we walked past, we saw that the house was in the process of being demolished.