Craig Davidson doesn't wear a different hat when he sits down to write one of his Nick Cutter books, but writing a bloody thriller does give the author a little more freedom than he gets with the literary novels he is known for.

Below, Craig Davidson/Nick Cutter explains how he wrote his dystopian novel The Acolyte, from the American politicians who inspired him to the important advice he got from his father.

"I was living down in Iowa when George W. Bush won his second electorate. I was in a university environment and I remember all of us thinking there's just no way he's going to win again. And then we watched the newscast and saw more and more states being shaded in red rather than blue. I realized that at least 51 per cent of the American people deviate strongly from my own thinking.

"Putting together a dystopian book, you look around and see the stuff that is happening in society. Donald Rumsfeld gave an interview where he said he actually went to church and prayed before he decided what kind of strategy he was going to enact with Iraq. I thought, wow, you got a guy admitting he is asking God for guidance as to military policy. And that freaked me out. I began to envision a world where religious fundamentalists have ensconced themselves and their dictates are the way that the world is run."

"If you were going to do a word count on the book, it would probably be around 70,000 words. But the first version of The Acolyte was around 180,000 words. It was just this beastly, boggy thing. The first version was very dogmatic and preachy, and that's one of the main things that's changed over the years. I cut 90,000 words of religious moralizing."

"My dad is always my first reader. He's a retired banker now, and he's always a pretty good bellwether. If his first sentiment is 'You've got something here,' you can take that to the bank about whether it will be accepted for publication. If he says 'I really don't know about this, Craig,' then that's also a fairly good bellwether for trouble. I know his first sentiment of The Acolyte was that it was too preachy and I certainly took that to heart."

"There is certain freedom with writing as Nick Cutter. I wrote Cataract City (as Craig Davidson) thinking of a Canadian audience and what my publishers might have been looking for in terms of wanting to submit the book for awards. You know that if you introduce certain elements that really don't belong — like a vampire or something — then you know you're going to get yourself in trouble and you're going to reduce its chances of being successful. With horror fiction, there are certain things that readers expect but there's no prescription of, 'Oh you better not do that.' I don't have to worry about going too far with the Nick Cutter stuff."