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The biggest book behind my novel is The Body Keeps the Score. But calling it the biggest is putting it lightly, because a lot of things in my life had to come together before I wanted to write this story.
I’m David Galle, and Digital Asylum is my debut novel. These are the books, shows, and teachers that built it.
Key Takeaways
- Struggle Well was the first spark. It made me want to help people who’d been through what I had.
- The Body Keeps the Score gave me the science. Sam Harris and Vipassana gave me the meditation.
- The Circle gave me Flow. Star Trek and Black Mirror gave me the future.
- It’s not a self-help book. It’s sci-fi with some useful things sprinkled in.
So what was the first spark?
I did a lot of my reading when I lived in New Zealand, and the first spark was Struggle Well: Thriving in the Aftermath of Trauma by Ken Falke and Josh Goldberg. Falke spent 21 years in Navy bomb disposal (EOD), and Goldberg is his business partner at Boulder Crest.
Near the end, they suggest that if you’ve gone through PTSD and made it to the other side, it’s good to go back and help other people. I sat with that. Okay, how could I help? What could I help with?
I didn’t know yet what that would turn into. In 2020, when I lived in New Zealand, right in the middle of COVID, I tried to make a documentary about veterans and PTSD. I called up some friends and started filming parts of it. I even wrote a whole script. But COVID made everything complicated, and I really didn’t feel comfortable on camera. So I scrapped it.
Fiction turned out to be the way. Nonfiction can be too boring for some people.
Struggle Well: Thriving in the Aftermath of Trauma by Ken Falke and Josh Goldberg. A Navy bomb disposal veteran and his partner on growing through trauma instead of just surviving it. Practical, honest, and written for people who have been there.
Why fiction instead of nonfiction?
Over the past decade, I’ve gained a huge appreciation for fiction, and I wanted to give something back to it.
The classics hold a special place in my heart. Some are about 2,000 years old, like Metamorphoses. Some are just huge, like Moby-Dick and War and Peace. Then there’s Notes from Underground, and one of my favorite books, Of Human Bondage.
I love these books because they capture what it means to be human. It’s almost like you can look in a mirror and see yourself in these stories. The fact that they’re old somehow makes it stronger. These people wrote these stories so many years ago, and I can see myself in them. I can see their world in my world. It gives you this feeling that all of us are connected.
I knew I wanted to try to add to that human legacy of writing.
Why set it in the future?
I knew I wanted to talk about PTSD, but I also wanted an interesting story. I used to be obsessed with Star Trek, the original series and The Next Generation. Star Trek let its writers explore hard topics happening on Earth through a different lens. They could step away from the issue and look at it a little more critically. They did that from the very beginning. (I haven’t watched any of the new Star Trek.)
So I took that idea and used sci-fi as a stage. Not only for PTSD, but for other parts of the world we live in right now, from a step back.
Then there’s Black Mirror. It’s dystopian, but most of the time it’s not a hard dystopia. A lot of episodes just make you feel unsettled, and I think that’s an interesting feeling to explore. If you want more of it, Ecem rounded up 7 books like Black Mirror.
Where the science came from
I took some of the science from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It’s really good, but at the end of the day, it’s sort of a textbook. It’s told through stories of patients and what they went through, followed by what’s thought to be happening in the body.
I do want to say this: my book isn’t a self-help book. It’s sci-fi. But I took pieces from things that helped me, and that I thought would help other people, and sprinkled them in. There are hints of them, but they don’t take over the story by any means.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. How trauma changes the brain and body, told through real patient stories. Dense like a textbook, but it explains PTSD better than almost anything else.
Where the meditation came from
Meditation comes up several times in the book, and it’s written so you can follow along while you read. You can breathe in and out as Marlow goes through his journey. I think meditation is extremely valuable for anybody.
The style of meditation I was going for comes from Sam Harris. His book Waking Up is fantastic for anyone who knows nothing about meditation. If you already know some, maybe even more so. It helps you think clearly about how meditation works. The Waking Up app is an incredible resource too, and I especially like Joseph Goldstein’s teachings on it.
The ideas come from Harris and Goldstein, from two 10-day Vipassana courses in S.N. Goenka’s tradition (dhamma.org), and from the Buddha, or at least what’s in the Pali Canon. I read In the Buddha’s Words, edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi. It has some interesting stories, but you get the most out of it by actually practicing. I told the retreat story in Why I Wrote Digital Asylum.
Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris. A neuroscientist makes the case for meditation with no incense required. Great for total beginners, and maybe even better if you already sit.
In the Buddha’s Words by Bhikkhu Bodhi. Hand-picked teachings from the oldest Buddhist texts, sorted by theme with clear introductions. Read a little, then go sit. That’s where it clicks.
Where Flow came from
Flow, the tech monopoly in my book, comes mostly from Dave Eggers’ The Circle. The parallels are easy to see: a tech company that sees everything. Eggers is a little more direct with it. I tried to be a little more nuanced.
I’ll be honest. I don’t think The Circle is that great of a book. No offense to Dave Eggers. It’s okay. But it did inspire me to write mine, and it definitely makes you think about where we are now and where we’re going. That’s what I wanted to emulate.
The Circle by Dave Eggers. A young woman lands a dream job at the world’s most powerful tech company. Not a perfect read, but you’ll eye your phone differently afterward.
And one poem
There’s a scene where a character watches a cartoon that mirrors “Fear,” a poem usually credited to Kahlil Gibran. It’s about a river flowing toward the ocean. It’s a beautiful poem, and he did a much better version than I did. If anybody recognizes the connection, I hope they do. He deserves the credit.
So where did Marlow come from?
No book. Marlow is a mix of a lot of things. He’s a little bit me, and a little bit other people I know with PTSD. People with PTSD can be hard to be around, and so was I. A lot of us are miserable and angry, and we don’t know how to control our emotions. For a lot of the book, that’s Marlow, and he comes off as kind of an asshole.
So how did the story change?
My outline made the story work on paper. But as I wrote, I kept finding places where it needed more, so I added pieces to shape it into what it is now. (How I built the outline is in My Advice for New Writers.)
One was a hike in the park. I wanted to show Marlow trying things and failing at them. When you’re struggling, failing is just one more thing that sucks, and it takes a lot of energy to try. But being able to try something at all is an incredible achievement. He goes to the park and has a breakdown. That’s okay. It’s part of the process. You’ve got to start feeling your feelings, and if you’re hurting, you’re going to have some breakdowns. I never say that outright in the book. I just wanted to show it.
Another was a lunch with Edwin, his friend from work. That chapter was all errands, overly complicated ones, and it was boring. I didn’t want something so dramatic that it changed the whole plot, so I sent him to lunch with Edwin. Their conversation picks the chapter up and carries it.
If you read just one before November 11
If you can handle a textbook, read The Body Keeps the Score. If you want the meditation side, read Waking Up. And if you want to look at the world around you a little differently, read The Circle. It’s not my favorite read, but it’s one of those books you finish and then start noticing everything.
If you’re struggling, talk to a professional. These books helped me, but they don’t replace real help.
If this isn’t enough
Start with the spoiler-free pitch: Why Digital Asylum by David Galle Is a Must-Read for 2026.
Digital Asylum comes out Wednesday, November 11. Mark November 11. Buying it that day helps a debut novel climb the charts more than anything else you can do.
Quick answers
- What books inspired the novel? Struggle Well, The Body Keeps the Score, Waking Up, and The Circle, plus a lot of classics.
- Is it a self-help book? No. It’s speculative fiction with some meditation and PTSD science sprinkled in.
- Do I need to read these first? No. Marlow starts out knowing nothing about meditation either.
- Is Flow based on a real company? It borrows most from the made-up company in The Circle, plus a mix of today’s big tech.
- When does it come out? November 11, 2026. Kindle is $4.99 and the paperback is $11.99.
Follow @david.galle on Instagram for launch day.
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