Blackout came from a very specific kind of fear I have always loved in horror: the fear of being trapped somewhere mechanical, isolated, and failing, with something intelligent moving just out of sight. It was heavily inspired by the kind of tension found in Alien, Aliens, Alien: Isolation, Dead Space, and other cat-and-mouse horror stories where survival depends as much on silence, timing, and nerve as it does on bravery. I have always been drawn to stories where the environment itself feels hostile, where the walls groan, the lights fail, and every corridor feels like it is hiding intent.

At the centre of Blackout is Nyah Calder, waking alone aboard a ship that already feels half dead. The systems are failing, the logs are corrupted, the crew is gone, and something is still moving through the dark. What follows is not a story about heroics in the traditional sense, but about endurance under pressure, about being hunted in a place that was never designed to protect you, and about trying to stay alive inside a machine that has already decided what your life is worth.

What interested me most while writing Blackout was the cruelty of indifference. Not just the threat stalking the ship, but the cold, built-in logic of a corporate system that prioritises cargo, data, and procedure over human life. That idea became just as important to the horror as the creature itself. The ship is not merely the setting. It is part of the nightmare. Its failing lights, sealed routes, and collapsing systems all become extensions of the same suffocating question: how do you survive when everything around you has already written you off?

Blending sci-fi horror, isolation dread, and slow-building sensory terror, Blackout is a novel about vulnerability, pursuit, and the unbearable intimacy of being hunted in the dark. It is for readers who love pressure-cooker suspense, hostile environments, and that terrible moment when you realise the thing chasing you is not just following your movements, but learning them.

Welcome aboard the CS Prospect. Keep quiet. The dark is listening.