The novel, A More Perfect World, is a tale of thwarted love set in a place where the boundaries between the real and the virtual are dangerously blurred, and your dearest memories may not be your own. A place where desire for one person is heresy. Welcome to the Virtuality. A world that doesn’t want you to leave. Ever.

Patrick holds onto poignant memories of his earlier illicit relationship with Eva. When she goes missing, he embarks on a journey which takes him into the dark heart of The Virtuality. He comes to realise his own memories of grief for his dead mother and his fractured relationship with Eva are fundamental to the very functioning of the virtual world.

This may not be the sort of book you might ordinarily read but what for me, the novel is primarily about grief and love. I began writing it soon after my mother died. The urge to revisit her in her final moments and to say things I wanted to say to her but couldn’t, was the initial idea of my first draft. As writing progressed, I asked myself what if there was a technology that could to do that convincingly by tapping into one’s actual memories and improving them. Or even swapping memories. From that point I considered other things people might choose if they had a chance to ‘make life more perfect’ like revisiting an unrequited love of your teens or being able to work in the loveliest place you ever visited on holiday – and your friends could come too. Pleasure would be utterly transformed.

I’ve been told the book is well-paced and some readers feel it has some lovely poetic imagery. Inspiration came from many sources: grieving for my mother and father, the sense of time passing and the nostalgic twinges I experienced so often thinking back over life. Inspiration also came from XR activists who were unpopular and hounded but fight for what they believe to be right. Concern over the influence of powerful tech and the companies that control that tech: the inexorable rise of AI and social media and how they’ve made facts, identity and truth infinitely pliable has been a core fascination throughout my time writing this book.