Prison. The best place to write a crime novel. I went to see the chaplain every week in prison. Not because I wanted any spiritual guidance, I’ve been a devout atheist since I was 13, but simply because he was the only person the prison provided for inmates to talk to. Like a lot of inmates I was suffering from depression, but there were no mental health workers available for therapy, so I had to make do with what they had. The chaplain and I would chat about everything from what book I was reading to what I was going to do when I got out, and having someone that treated me like I was still a person did make a difference. The fact he always had cake in the chapel helped too. The prison I did most of my time at was a sawmill. I worked in administration, processing the other inmate’s pay. I use the term ‘pay’ loosely. Depending on what they did for work, inmates received between $1.08 and $2.20 an hour. At the time I was quite proud to be on $2.20. To earn some extra cash I took a second official job cleaning my cell block. And I had my side-hustle, drawing portraits from photos. I didn’t have to spend money ordering extra food as other inmates paid me with things like cans of tuna or blocks of chocolate for portraits of their kids, girlfriends or pets. ‘You looked stressed today Damien’, the chaplain said, after I sat down in his office. ‘Yeah’, I said, ‘I’m just a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I’m working all day, then I try and rush in a gym session before we get locked in. Then I have to start cleaning. And I’m backlogged with about six portraits. Plus I’m behind on my novel. I wrote myself into a corner so now I have to go back and rewrite several chapters again.’ ‘Sounds like you’re certainly keeping busy’, he said with a smile. I rested my face into one hand. ‘I just feel like I never have enough time in here these days, you know what I mean?’
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