NEW ANNOUNCEMENT: Join Me In Person October 20th
Speaker Series – Bill Koch
October 20 at 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
I will be a feature speaker at the North Shore Writers Association (NSWA) monthly members’ meeting in October. This event is welcome for any non-members to attend - no rsvp needed. NSWA's event details below...
"Listeners will hear his journey from highly respected psychologist to masterful writer of fiction. He’ll describe how he navigated the self-publishing world and implemented his marketing strategy. Also, he’ll provide insight to how his career as a psychologist helped to create
compelling and complicated characters. Bill Koch is an award-winning psychologist and writer of fiction and memoir. He recently published his first novel, Hired Gun: Uncovering Buried Secrets which is receiving 5-star reviews on Goodreads.
He is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio, where he published emerge 21, the Writer’s Studio Anthology.
A second novel, tentatively entitled Shrinks: Do You Need One? is in progress. He lives in West Vancouver with his wife and two high-
maintenance cats."
Meeting: North Vancouver City Library, 120 14th St. W, 6:30-8:30 pm. Open to the public.
More event information: https://nswriters.org/event/speaker-series-bill-koch/
Coming Soon
Psychologists are trained to help others survive grief, trauma, and despair. But what happens when the healers find themselves lost in their own lives?
Spanning three decades in Vancouver—from 1981 to 2010—this collection of stories follows three psychologists, David, Ebba, and Ben, as they navigate the delicate line between professional roles and personal upheaval.
Bound by friendship and a shared vocation, they guide patients through grief, trauma, obsession, depression, and fear while their lives beyond the consulting room grow increasingly turbulent...
“What if the person we trust to fix our broken life is living with pain that mirrors our own? This is the landscape Bill Koch explores in Shrinks. Through a series of linked stories, Shrinks follows the lives and relationships of a group of psychologists and their patients, looking with insight and intimacy into their private thoughts and actions. With a deft touch, Koch quickly draws us in, making us confidantes and secret keepers. At its heart, Shrinks asks us to believe that despite the darkness and despair in our daily lives, there can be help and hope. Koch’s respected clinical background shines through, underpinning the stories with insider knowledge and echoes of true-life cases. His experience is his special edge. He has been there. How often do we fail to see mental health professionals as human beings, flawed, with demons of their own? Does this give them extra insight into the lives and struggles of their clients, or place an impossible burden on them? Shrinks takes a compassionate and unflinching look at the answers.”
—Trish Gauntlett, author of Bending Starlight
HIRED GUN
Available Now
UNCOVERING BURIED SECRETS
David Lipman’s patients are dying, but it’s going to take risking his license and reputation to stop a killer. How far is he prepared to go?
Psychologist David Lipman is still grieving a personal loss when he’s blindsided by the mysterious death of a patient. He’s just picking up the pieces of his life with a new romance and the slightly overbearing support of his adult daughters, when another young woman in his care dies violently as well. Despite having written a respected book on physician misconduct, David finds himself crossing the line of dual-relationships as he grapples with this tragedy, to the point that the gimlet-eyed detective on the case regards him as a suspect. Meanwhile, the real killer continues to stalk.
“Hired Gun is a riveting mystery about powerful men and vulnerable women... an engrossing novel that you won’t want to put down.”
—Lynn E. Alden, Ph.D., R.Psych, Professor and Clinical Psychologist
“In the action-packed psychological thriller Hired Gun, a sympathetic doctor pursues truth and justice.”
—Foreword Clarion Reviews
About the Author
BILL KOCH
In his career as a psychologist, Bill Koch conducted research in anxiety disorders and trauma, was a highly credentialed cognitive-behaviour therapist, and provided assessments for the courts with respect to the psychological consequences of trauma. Another aspect of his career involved the investigation and adjudication of ethical violations for the College of Psychologists of BC, and assessment of health professionals for their fitness to practice. Currently, he is a clinical professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine.
You can subscribe to Bill's newsletter for the latest news and writing on his Substack, Bill Koch Writes.