Aylesbury Vale woman releases psychological thriller centred on hypnosis as debut novel

Sherry Hostler who lives in Quainton has completed a lifelong ambition in releasing her first book, Hypnotic.

The Quainton wife has always had a passion for writing and put pen to paper as an escape from the mundanity of her ‘sensible’ job.

But used lockdown as the real motivation to get Hypnotic written, overall the process has taken her three years.

On 20 March her self-published debut novel hit bookstores, it can be ordered at shops across the country of purchased as a kindle or paperback from Amazon here.

So far the book has received only perfect five-star reviews on the dominant ordering website.

The book can also be purchased via local bookstores, all customers have to do is request for the shop to order the novel.

Sherry's intriguing thriller chronicles the life of Tom a man in crisis looking to save his marriage.

He unwittingly ends up participating in a university experiment analysing whether someone can be hypnotised into committing murder.

Bethany, is the mastermind behind the experiment, she has her own secrets and hidden motivations for seeing the scheme through.

Sherry told The Bucks Herald: “It was totally inspired by Derren Brown.

"I’m a big fan of his and he did one of his tv experiments, years ago now, and it was along the lines of: ‘can you hypnotise someone to commit murder?’

"And they invited some poor guy, to see if he would kill Stephen Fry. I watched that years ago and had an inkling then of what I could do with it.

"I find hypnotism fascinating, I gave up smoking years ago through hypnotism.

"If you read about it, it’s amazing some of the stuff that comes up.

"If you can get past someone’s natural morals, then you can pretty much get them to do whatever you want, but I do think it’s pretty rare.”

Sherry is no novice when it comes to words, she’s had several articles and features published in magazines, but the challenge of writing a full novel was a different beast.

Especially, one in the thriller genre, where continuity is everything.

She said: “It’s a weird one. I’ve written plenty of stuff before for magazines, and I’ve written a couple of novellas.

"And I just let myself go with the flow with those, but this is the first psychological thriller that I’ve written, and I just found the process was completely different.

"I had to plot every single bit, because if you’ve got any holes in it your readers are going to pick them up straight away.

"It was difficult for a long time, planning was actually the hardest bit, and then you get the enjoyment of going with it and letting your characters do what they need to get on with.”

Another novel is on the way, Sherry has written 75% of her next fictional feature.

Hypnotic was self-published and Sherry is continuing on with her day job, but still harbours hopes of turning this part-time labour of love into a permanent fixture.

On her website which can be viewed here, Sherry mentions that writing has been her dream job since she was five, well it was between being a novelist and a trapeze artist, she says.