Behind the Gates: How The Golden House Began
Some stories remain with you long before you realize you are going to write them.
I spent much of my nursing career working in behavioral health. As a new nurse moving between different hospitals, I met numerous psychiatrists and heard stories about how patients had been treated in earlier generations. Women could be committed after their husbands made accusations against them, often with little meaningful opportunity to challenge those claims. Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness, and gay men and women were subjected to treatments that could resemble scenes from A Clockwork Orange.
Those stories stayed with me for years, but until The Golden House, I had never attempted to write a novel centered on psychiatry.
Before explaining how the book came together, I also want to thank my readers for their patience. Over the past few years, I have experienced a series of health issues that greatly reduced the time and energy I could devote to writing. I am feeling better now, and I’m happy to say that my creative momentum is returning.
The first version of The Golden House appeared in 2023, when I entered a short-story contest built around the prompt of a hidden passage. I wrote a 3,000-word story set in the present day about a couple who purchases an abandoned psychiatric hospital. While exploring the building, they discover a concealed door leading to a secret office—and eventually to a hidden morgue.
I didn’t win the contest, but the feedback was encouraging. Readers wanted to know what had happened inside the hospital. Why were there bodies in the morgue? Who had put them there?
I didn’t have an answer.
As a certified “pantser,” I had created the mystery without developing a plot beyond the original 3,000 words. Still, the story continued to roll around in my mind. I kept returning to the abandoned hospital, the hidden office, and the unanswered questions behind that locked door.
Eventually, Dr. Ira Golden was born—a brilliant but deeply troubled psychiatrist who believes he can help even the most challenging patient. Ira does not see himself as a villain. He believes in his abilities and convinces himself that his actions are motivated by compassion, even when his professional judgment begins to give way to something far more personal.
Once I had Dr. Golden, I needed a protagonist. That was probably the most difficult part.
I didn’t want the central character to be defined by a psychiatric illness. I wanted an ordinary person thrust into Golden’s world—someone who would experience the institution’s power firsthand and eventually be forced to challenge it.
That brought me back to the stories I had heard about women committed by their husbands and homosexuals subjected to psychiatric “treatment.” I struggled to decide which character should anchor the novel. Then I asked myself: Why not include both? And why not make them members of a prominent family whose name and reputation mean everything to its patriarch?
From there, the Orwell family was born. Spoiler alert: the name is a nod to one of my favorite writers, the great George Orwell.
At first, I wasn’t sure whether Anna, the mother struggling with mental illness, or Oliver, her gay son, should become the story’s hero. But as I wrote, Oliver naturally emerged as the counterpoint to Dr. Golden. His journey from shame and powerlessness toward courage and self-acceptance became the heart of the novel.
I won’t spoil what happens after Oliver enters the Golden House. But if you enjoy an underdog story filled with family secrets, psychological suspense, and a little history along the way, I hope you will step through its gates.
Not all heroes are superhuman. Sometimes they are ordinary people who have simply been pushed far enough to act.
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