Your average shrink would have a field day with a patient who describes himself as a cross between a working dog and a perfectionist. A man recently consumed by thoughts of sadomasochism, swamps and serial killers, who imagines himself being lowered into the grave typing.
But for clinical psychologist and best-selling thriller author Jonathan Kellerman, this is all in a day's work.
He says a vivid imagination, combined with a clinical fascination with the dark side of human nature, feeds the pool of creativity that has enabled him to publish 31 works of fiction and non-fiction since 1980.
He adds that the meticulousness with which he orders his desk is the same force that fuels his interest in structure, and what he calls the 'architecture of language'.
Speaking from his Los Angeles home, Kellerman, 59, discusses his latest novel Bones and attributes his success to adopting a workaday approach to his writing. Choosing interesting topics without preaching issues, combined with an author's ability to 'get the bad guys 100 per cent of the time', keeps readers coming back for more, he says.
Kellerman arrived on the literary scene in 1985 with the publication of his first novel When the Bough Breaks, which won the Edgar Allan Poe and Anthony Boucher Awards for best first novel, and introduced his core series character, psychologist Alex Delaware.
While being consumed with a love of writing since the age of 12, and having picked up a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for fiction when studying at UCLA, he had to earn his crust as a practising clinical psychologist in Los Angeles for years before hitting literary pay dirt.