You could say that ‘believing is seeing’ is not only the idea around which my novel ‘The Killing House’ revolves, but also all of my work. This is why I write: to shape the world. My novels may be a world of their own but as soon as the reader enters into them and suspends disbelief, then the reader’s actual world is changed as well. Graham Greene’s novels had a particular flavour – he was a Roman Catholic and a pessimist, and this was what informed all his stories, to the extent that his gloomy fictional world became known as Greeneland. Well, I think of my own fictional world as Kimberland, and rather than being a world of sin and futility and melancholy, it is one of optimism and meaning. That is the essence of the mantra, ‘believing is seeing.’ If you imagine your life is pointless and that human existence has no purpose, then that is how you will experience being alive. However, if you imagine the opposite, then your life will be much more fulfilling. Life is colonising matter: that was Colin Wilson’s mantra and it’s mine as well.

Gomery Kimber is an English author of the psychological thrillers including the novels, No Air Native, No Man Kindred, and the Big Shilling trilogy, whose writing exemplar is the English novelist, philosopher, and critic, Colin Wilson.