Scott GoughScott GoughFaith memoir and honest writing for evidence-minded readers – people who want the account to stand up, not just sound good.
New: Begin, my app for would-be writers
I’m a project management consultant from Swindon. A husband, a father of six, and for most of my life, not a believer. I spent years trusting evidence, process, and things I could verify – and then found myself asking questions I couldn’t put down.
In early 2026 I was baptised, alongside my wife, at St Philip’s in Upper Stratton. My first book tells the story of how that happened – plainly, honestly, and without asking the reader to take anything on trust that I didn’t have to.
A first-person account of a conversion nobody saw coming, least of all me. Written for the reader who is sceptical by nature – because I was one. No pressure, no polish, just what actually happened and the questions that got me there.
Out nowAs featured in the Swindon Advertiser: Swindon author’s book tells of his unexpected path to faith (5 August 2026)
Featured by the Diocese of Bristol: I kept seeing clips of The Chosen, I bought a Bible and discovered Jesus (11 September 2026)
★★★★★“I read this book in one day, I couldn’t put it down. It’s a personal account of finding faith that cannot fail to touch your heart, candid with momentum and honesty. I found it heart warming and inspiring.”
Rebecca Romer · verified purchase on Amazon
★★★★★“I started this book sitting on the fence about Faith, Jesus and so on. I don’t have all the answers for questions I have, however, this book made me realise I’m not alone in this and it’s all a process. I read it within 2 days which is a record for me with books.”
Sarah Louise · review on Goodreads
Already read it? A few honest sentences help more than anything else I can do – review it on Amazon or on Goodreads. If you were given a copy rather than buying one on Amazon, Goodreads is the easier of the two.
This book exists because people were patient with my questions long before there was any reason to be. My wife, who was asked to defend her faith at a moment’s notice more times than was fair. The friends who kept answering. And the congregation at St Philip’s in Upper Stratton, who made room for a sceptic before he had worked out what he was doing there.
To everyone who has bought a copy, borrowed one, or passed it to somebody they thought might need it – thank you. I wrote it hoping it would reach one person who thinks faith is not for people like them. Every copy that leaves a table makes that a little more likely.
The Unexpected Path to Faith ended at the water, with my baptism in February alongside my wife and two of our sons. This is what happened next. Over a single year, doors I never asked to be opened kept opening. People kept noticing. Responsibilities kept appearing. From an unplanned prayer in front of six people to leading the parish’s first summer fête in years, it is the story of how I moved from the back pew to the front of the room, and said yes long before I would have called it calling.
Out nowFeatured by the Diocese of Bristol: Calling: A reflection on the journey of faith after baptism (13 October 2026)
★★★★★“Wow, amazing, brilliant and so many other words do not describe this book good enough. After reading the first book within 2 days, and absolutely loving it, I knew I had to read the second one. I could not put it down!! It consumed me in such an amazing way. The author is so honest and open with everything and his story and writing pulls you in. It is very well written and you can feel the passion and emotion from the author via his words. Another great book from Scott.”
BnS Watkins · verified purchase on Amazon
Jack cleans the children’s ward of a Hull hospital. He works the same route every day, in the same order, and most people stopped noticing him a long time ago. That suits him.
Then a child dies while he is mopping the floor of her room. The parents pray, and something in Jack that was closed a long time ago opens again.
The dreams come back. A valley full of dry bones. Wheels of fire. A throne above the smoke. Beasts climbing out of the sea. Jack has no words for what he sees at night, but the prophets did. Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel, Joel and John wrote it all down thousands of years ago.
His doctor has an explanation, careful and honest. An old priest has another, and a secret he has kept for twenty-seven years.
The Interpreter is a novel for anyone who has stood at the edge of their own certainty and felt it give a little. You can read Jack’s story as the work of a singular mind, and defend that reading to the last page. Or you can ask the question it leaves open: what if God is reaching out to him?
Out now★★★★★“This is a spare, tidy story. The main character, Jack, leads a humble life as a janitor. However, since childhood he has received dreams and visions from the Bible: Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel and Revelations, books he has never read and stories he has never heard. I found this book to be an uplifting step in my spiritual journey.”
RW Bennett · verified purchase on Amazon.com
★★★★★“They say things come in threes…..must be true as this is Scott’s third brilliant book. It had me hooked from the start. The writing is brilliant and makes you connect with the characters and how they are feeling. The words used and how they are written really make you visual what is happening. It is a book that makes you truly, think, feel and be consumed by. Truly remarkable reading.”
BnS Watkins · verified purchase on Amazon
I’ve adapted The Interpreter for readers aged 8 and up, written first for my own children. It’s the same story of Jack, his dreams and the question they leave open, retold in plain, gentle language across sixteen short chapters and illustrated throughout.
It handles loss honestly but gently, so it works well read aloud together.
Out nowShorter pieces alongside the books – reflections on faith, doubt, and the questions that started it all. If there’s a question about faith you’d like an honest, non-preachy answer to, I’d like to hear it – it may become a piece here.
The device most people use to scroll past faith is the one that led me to it.
The war in heaven, demons and the devil. I think the battle is closer to home.
Hard Old Testament passages, read with Jesus as the lens.
Everything on my list adds something. Fasting is the one thing that takes away.
The doubts that arrive after you believe, not before. This one has no answer yet.
If He had that power, why did He not use it? The answer is love, the long way round.
One historical question decides the whole thing. Go and test it properly.
The liberty that lets someone reject faith was built by people who held it.
The short version of how an evidence-minded atheist changed his mind.
Science answers how. The questions underneath belong to someone else.
Full immersion at thirty-seven, with my questions intact.
Liar, deluded, or telling the truth. I could only make one option work.
The first believer in our family was ten years old.
I’m currently writing my next novel, Code Name Eden, a science fiction story about faith at the edge of what science can explain.
Joshua is an engineer from Manchester, one of the team building BeyondEarth’s settlement on Mars. One day, drilling somewhere he was not meant to be, he uncovers a stone too perfectly shaped to be natural, cut with markings nobody can read.
When a machine tries to lift it, the stone breaks the machine, and nobody can shift it from where it falls. Then Joshua picks it up in front of everyone, as easily as any other stone.
Months of decoding turn the markings into coordinates: a point in the outer solar system where telescopes see nothing. Yet for decades, comets passing that way have bent around empty space, each one written off as a measurement error. Now the errors line up. The probes sent to look go silent, return data no one can interpret, or come back with their clocks wrong.
Scientists see a hardware fault. The Church sees a warning. Everyone assumes the mind behind the stone belongs to another species, because that is the only box they have. And the stone answers to one person. If anyone goes, Joshua goes – the least qualified member of the crew, with no reason anyone can find except that he was the one who found it.
Code Name Eden is a novel about how far science can carry us, and what might be waiting at the point where it runs out.
In production
More in the notebook. Other ideas and titles are still maturing alongside it. Among them: a present-day treasure hunt that begins when a man lost in the mountains stumbles on a monk’s centuries-old directions to a relic said to grant eternal life; a historical novel set in a sealed English valley in the 1500s, where a smuggler of banned scripture is trapped by a sickness and a dragon nobody can prove is real; and a contemporary crime drama about a man framed by his own brothers, and what he does when, years later, their fate is in his hands. Each one leaves the same question open: was it God, or was it chance?
A lot of people tell me they’d love to write a book but don’t know where to start. Begin is my answer to that. It’s a simple app built from the way I write my own books: it asks you one question at a time, you answer in your own words, and everything you write is kept as raw material to shape into chapters later.
Nothing gets polished yet, and nothing gets added that you didn’t say. Your writing stays on your own device, and it belongs to you.
Beta
I’m testing it with a small group first. If you’d like to try it and tell me what works and what doesn’t, ask for a place on the beta.
Ask to try the betaIf you grew up with the books where you chose what happened next, you’ll remember reading a page, making a choice, and turning to page 214 to find out if you survived. Usually you didn’t. So you kept a finger in the page, went back, and tried again.
Finger in the Page is my take on those books. There are five stories, each in a different world: a salvage crew in deep space, a hedge knight and a dragon, survivors racing for the last evacuation flight, a rescue team on a plateau where dinosaurs never died out, and a charioteer in ancient Rome who uncovers a plot to kill the Emperor. You name your character and companions, choose what to take, then read, choose and roll the dice when things get dangerous. Every story has pictures, its own music and several endings, and every page can be read aloud.
Beta
I’m testing it with a small group of readers first. If you’d like to try at least two of the stories and tell me what grabbed you and where you got stuck, ask for a place on the beta.
Ask to try the beta
St Philip’s is the Church of England parish church for Upper Stratton, Swindon – and the place where much of this story happened. Sunday service is at 11am on Beechcroft Road, and everyone is welcome, wherever you are with faith. It’s where I was, when I first walked in.
Give to St Philip’s. Scan the code or use the link above to support the parish through the Parish Giving Scheme.
If the book helped you, made you think, or left you with a question – I’d like to hear from you. That’s the whole reason it exists.
Email meOr write directly: hello@scottgough.com