HELPING bring about change to one’s life is a fundamental premise upon which an Alderley Edge author has published his first work of fiction

The painstakingly written Malcolm McClean novel, The Art of Being One, which took two and a half years to complete, is based on a soccer player facing up to his fears and anxieties and creating personal goals.

There are several influences at work in the book, of which some are local to Alderley Edge and Wilmslow, while others involve the glitzy world of professional football.

Malcolm was influenced to produce the novel after speaking with former Tottenham Hospur goalkeeper Brad Friedel and former Liverpool and Manchester City midfield defender Dietmar Hamann.

The pair has figured in books previously written by Malcolm, the latter of which, featured in The Sunday Times bestseller list.

The new novel picks up on the rarified world in which many professional players inhabit during their career, which Malcolm then uses as inspiration for his central character Jonathan in the novel.

He said: “When you get to look closely at what appears to be quite a glamorous lifestyle, you realise that these people live in a kind of bubble, protected from the real world.

“I started to imagine what would happen if one of them ‘burst the bubble’ and went to live in a world where normal people do normal things.”

Malcolm was also inspired to write the novel after the tragic circumstances of German international goalkeeper Robert Enke who in 2009 died after walking into the path of an intercity train in Germany.

“This guy was famous but there was something going on in his life and in his head and nobody even noticed. That lonely life of a goalkeeper and nobody knows.”

And while the novel is fundamentally about helping people of whatever background change their lives, it also touches on issues such as men in particular being unwilling to talk about issues bothering them include homosexuality.

Malcolm, who a few years ago set up a mental health organisation It’s A Goal Foundation, to help men with low self esteem and depression, said 7,000 men a year in Britain are killing themselves because of being unable to talk about what’s troubling them.

The charity, of which he is no longer a part, still uses football stadia including Manchester United's Old Trafford ground, as a setting and uses football metaphors to cut through medical spiel and get men to talk about their own personal concerns.

Malcolm adds: “The novel is a story is of a goalkeeper Jonathan Christie, who inexplicably walks off the pitch during a game, and out into the streets of East London. He jumps on the Tube on a journey in search of happiness, a journey which changes his own life, and in time a journey which changes all of our lives.

“When Jonathan makes it back to Alderley Edge, he holes up in a place called The Hermit, high up on the wooded sandstone escarpment that forms The Edge.”

It is there that a small entourage assembles around him, all keen to make sense of their lives who are prompted by hippy musician Marielle

“The philosophy of Marielle’s mentor Halmund Bjorgum is: ‘You have to get lost in order to find yourself’.”

The paperback is available from bookshops and online retailers priced £7.99.