Ian Backhouse, a former Met Police firearms officer turned paranormal thriller author, shares with Spooky Isles how his passion for writing, life experiences, and mental health journey have shaped his career and creative process
Ian Backhouse Interview
Ian Backhouse, a paranormal author from Woburn Sands in Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire, weaves chilling tales that captivate the imagination, but his real-life story is just as compelling.
Alongside writing spine-tingling stories, Ian delivers powerful motivational talks on mental health, revealing how living with bipolar disorder has become the source of his creative energy.
His journey through the highs and lows of mental illness offers a raw and inspiring perspective on turning personal challenges into artistic fuel.
SPOOKY ISLES: Can you share the journey that led you from being a firearms officer with the Met Police to becoming a paranormal thriller writer? What inspired this transition?
IAN BACKHOUSE: I’ve always had a passion for writing since I was a kid. I always got excited when I found out we were writing a story in English lessons!
However, my life had an odd way of following three distinct paths parallel to each other. Each path I had a love of, so I found it impossible to give up one for the other: writing, drumming, and the police.
From a kid again, I wanted to be a police officer, loved writing, and from the age of eight, began taking drum lessons – an instrument my dad played.
At about 17, I began playing drums professionally, still writing, and a couple of years later, I joined the Met police. I made great music contacts in London and continued to play for fun (you couldn’t have a second job being a copper then), writing novels to keep developing my craft. Most of them were dreadful, but slowly improved.
One Christmas, I was sat in the driving seat of the ARV, with my colleague next to me. We pulled up at some lights, and I looked to my left at the pub on the corner. It had amazing Christmas lights inside and out, loads of people inside having a great time, and the music was awesome. In that very moment, I knew it was time. I said to my colleague, “You know, I’d rather be in there than sat in this seat.” That was it. I knew with total certainty it was time to move on.
So, I left and carried on drumming professionally again – still writing. For the next 15 years, I was a drummer. Eventually, in 2022, during lockdown, I wrote a novel I was finally pleased with. I knew it was the best work I’d done so far. Lou, my wife, insisted I send it off to publishers. I didn’t want to face rejection, but she convinced me. I couldn’t believe it when, two weeks later, Cranthorpe Millner Publishers offered me a book deal! Since then, it’s all started to take off.
I still have a day job working with SEN kids, but my name is steadily gaining traction amongst horror fans, and it looks as if, about a year or 18 months from now, I’ll be writing full time.
Your books are known for avoiding traditional horror tropes. How do you come up with fresh ideas for your stories, and what drives your creative process?
It’s very difficult, as so much has been done in horror books, but I find that nowadays, a lot of horror is just a rehash of the same tropes.
Not all of it, of course – there are some brilliant writers out there. The way I start is with a title, believe it or not. I think that is so important. It’s got to capture the potential reader immediately, make them question the plot, and imply true horror.
Once I have a title, I think about all the paranormal things I’ve come across in research, on video, TV, in books, etc. Especially documentaries that put forward scientific theories and “accepted” knowledge about the supernatural. It’s then that I can start turning them upside down, skewing them.
I try to come up with a plot that blows those theories out of the water and creates something far more terrifying than the theory really is. It’s a very good way of getting away from the tired old tropes.
I try to root it as much as I can in reality – if the reader thinks the events could actually happen, it’s far more frightening.
In your book, Whisper A Prayer, you explore a haunted library built over an old sanatorium. What research did you do to develop the setting, and how does it enhance the story?
Just the obvious, really. Visiting older libraries, soaking up the atmosphere, and taking photos. With the sanatorium, I had to rely on online research, especially photos and videos – loads of them – to get a strong idea of what they look like inside and out.
You often incorporate scientific hypotheses into your narratives. Can you provide an example of how you’ve flipped a scientific idea to create a unique plot twist?
In Beneath The Dark, it was more a case of “extending” a theory beyond what is accepted today, especially in most religions: the idea that good souls go on into the light, advancing through the spiritual realm to a higher existence, and that evil souls are taken by the darkness.
I created the idea that there were, in fact, levels of darkness, as there are levels of spiritual development for good souls. The first level is for those who made bad choices in life – criminals, for example. Then, not known to exist by anyone, the second level is for murderers, abusers, etc. Then the third – the dwelling place of demons, malign non-human entities.
But then, the worst of all – beneath the dark – is evil itself. It exists as an entity for no other reason than evil itself, the exact same reason the light exists for goodness itself. And it’s abhorrent, hideous beyond belief. Normally rooted down beneath the other layers, it finds a way up. Can’t tell you any more without spoiling the book! Lol!
How has your personal experience with bipolar disorder influenced your writing and storytelling? Do you find that it enhances your creativity?
It’s a love-hate relationship. I suffer badly from it, and despite medication, I still now and then have very bad “crashes”. They are debilitating, exhausting mentally and physically, and incredibly saddening. Thankfully, I come back up fairly quickly.
Once I’m okay again, I get sort of angry because the bipolar took away my writing time during that crash. So, I am then even more determined not to let it beat me, which manifests as focused motivation to write even more. That motivation turns into enhanced creativity.
What themes or messages do you hope readers take away from your novels, particularly in Whisper A Prayer?
I know it’s probably not “the done thing”, but I write for no other reason than to give people great stories. Stories that pull people in, scare them, excite them, and take them on a journey away from their everyday lives. I want them to be cheering for the good guys and despising the bad guys.
That said, the books do follow themes about loyalty and friendship, the power of the past to drag people down, good triumphing over evil – but often not without sacrifice of some kind – and champion the idea of never giving up. These themes appear automatically in the books through the rounded, strong characters and their behaviour and outlooks.
As an author who speaks candidly about mental health, how important is it for you to discuss these issues with your audience, and what impact do you hope to have?
Those with mental health issues often get smashed down by it, the illness running their lives – they become the illness, if you like. Their decisions are always made around how their mental health affects them. This means they often limit themselves in what they believe they can achieve in life. It often crushes their self-respect too.
I have, and still do to some extent, suffer in all of these ways. Obviously, I was not bipolar whilst in the police—it seems this was brought on later as a result of complex trauma from those days. But I was suffering from severe depression as my drumming career progressed, but I didn’t give up and had a successful time. The same with writing.
I was damned if I was going to let my mental health stop my dream. And that’s now starting to happen at 55. So, I can use these examples in my life to be living proof that despite mental illness, you can, without doubt, still achieve a hell of a lot. Added to this, it shows that even later in life, the same goes.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of your writing career so far, and how do you define success as a writer?
Without a doubt, it is whenever a reader tells me they loved the book. This is not taking pleasure in someone thinking you’re a good writer—it’s taking pleasure in knowing that someone has loved the story you wrote, the story you produced from nothing. To know they enjoyed it that much is a wonderful feeling and tells me I did a good job.
I write with the reader in mind every step of the way, and I think that’s how it should be. It’s not about you as the author. It’s about you as an author doing a great job of giving people stories they love to read. That is the mark of success for me.
Of course, my aim is to become full-time and well-known in the horror genre—I’m only human, and that would be awesome! Lol! But the core of success to me is getting those amazing emails and social media comments from people who loved the books.
Your debut novel, Beneath The Dark, received positive feedback. How has reader response influenced your writing or approach to storytelling in subsequent works?
Definitely! It proved to me how essential well-rounded, realistic characters are, so that the reader cares about them. If they care about them and what happens to them, they become invested in the story, and their enjoyment really kicks in. I must be on the right track as, from the feedback, it’s the return of those characters readers wanted.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers in the horror genre looking to carve out their own unique niche?
I’m still very much on that journey myself, but it seems to be steadily happening. I put that down to creating as unique a plot as possible, giving readers fresh, new experiences. The idea is that they will then want to read your books every time they come out, because they’re guaranteed something different.
Also, continue to hone your craft. Read as much as you can – you’ll discover bad writing as well as good, and that will help you develop your own style. More than anything, don’t give up. Getting your work known is hard work – there’s no point in pretending otherwise. But if you believe in your work and yourself, you’ll keep going. No one else is going to do that for you, so get stuck in.
When a book is about a third of the way through, I spend just as much time marketing it – and myself as an author. This is important, as I’ve found out. Do not, in any way, rely solely on social media. It has its role, but it doesn’t sell books or gain you much traction. Be there, develop a good presence, but focus more on magazines, guesting on websites, vlogs, blogs, appearing at conventions, and getting into local papers and local radio – those kinds of things.
Once you start appearing in these, you can include them in your letters or emails of request to the next magazine, etc., as it shows you are already of interest to other publications. It has a snowball effect, often helping you get noticed more easily in other places. That’s what is starting to gain me decent traction. But above all, never give up.
Have you read Ian Backhouse’s books? Tell us in the comments section below!
You can follow Ian Backhouse on Instagram @ibhorrorauthor and TikTok @ibhorrorauthor.
His books, Beneath The Dark and Alice Malign, are available from Amazon.
