UK author Katelyn Emilia Novak is looking to partner with producers on bringing The Diary Of Derek Drummond: The Story Of My Cursed Life — a psychological drama set within a gothic fantasy world — to the screen as a film or television series.
The Scotland- and London-set book is a modern-day story combining psychological drama, supernatural romance and gothic fantasy, told through the diary of its protagonist, immortal Scottish nobleman Derek Drummond, who is trapped in a century-old curse that sees him forced to live as a raven by day and a human by night.
“Derek Drummond is a man who has lived with this curse for more than a century,” says Novak, who cites Interview With The Vampire and the Penny Dreadful series as tonally similar. “Everything he has experienced, lost, survived and become is a result of this.
“I have always been fascinated by human behaviour and, in particular, by the way men process loss, guilt, love and emotional isolation,” continues the author, who trained as a psychologist. “I wanted to explore what more than a century of unresolved grief would actually do to a man psychologically. That’s where the character of Drummond came from.”
The concept of the curse gave Novak her narrative framework, and her love of Scottish folklore provided its setting. But the man at the heart of the story became far more interesting to her than the supernatural element itself. “I often describe the novel as a psychological drama wrapped in gothic fantasy,” she says.
Having lived in Italy for a decade before moving to London, where she is now based, Novak says Scotland has been part of her life for years. “Scotland stayed with me in a very particular way. The landscape, history, isolation and atmosphere felt completely natural for Drummond’s world,” muses Novak.
She wanted Scotland to be much more than a picturesque gothic backdrop. “The landscape became part of the emotional language of the story — the distance, the weather, the ancient places and that sense of beauty mixed with severity all seemed to belong to Drummond.”
Social-media phenomenon
Since the novel was published and distributed in April 2026 by Troubador Publishing, the character of Derek Drummond has expanded beyond the pages of the novel to become the subject of a growing fanbase on social media. He has built a following as a standalone digital personality with his own Instagram and TikTok pages.
“I started writing short episodic scripts, allowing him to continue speaking in his own voice outside the novel,” explains Novak. The accounts have grown into an ongoing gothic miniseries with a devoted fan community.
“What surprised me was that people began engaging with Drummond as a personality in his own right, rather than simply as a character they had read about,” she says. “People send him private messages, tell him how much they love him, respond emotionally to what he is going through, and some have even tried to video-call him.”
Novak, who runs a business unrelated to writing or publishing, began writing “as something intensely personal rather than as a career plan”. The Diary Of Derek Drummond: The Story Of My Cursed Life has grown into something much larger than she originally imagined.
Wider appeal
Novak now sees the potential for something larger for Drummond, not simply a novel and its companion, but a character-led world capable of existing across books, digital storytelling and, potentially, film or television.
“The raven-by-day and man-by-night transformation, the curse and its mythology, Scotland and London, the psychological drama, the relationships surrounding Derek, all give the story strong visual and dramatic potential,” says Novak.
Indeed Drummond’s story is set to extend further still: Novak originally conceived the story from a female protagonist’s perspective, before rewriting it from Drummond’s point of view. She has now written a companion piece called The Diary Of Megan MacKenzie, due to be published on October 28, 2026.
“Interestingly, the original female perspective never disappeared,” says Novak. “Now the same world is being expanded through Megan’s perspective.”
The author retains all film and television adaptation rights exclusively.
Contact: Katelyn Emilia Novak
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