I try to make sense of this beautiful, crazy world we inhabit through my stories—thrillers that are super well researched inside complex plots full of twists and turns, that pose ethical and moral dilemmas.
When I sit down to write a book, I have three non-negotiables:
1. It needs to concern a current or recent real world issue that I can deeply research (I love research!) and weave my fictional story into. Hopefully, so tightly that you struggle to spot where one stops and the other starts.
2. It has to have a complex plot full of twists and turns that’ll leave you guessing right until the end.
3. It must contain grey characters, even the good guys. This makes sense to me. First, as a reader I hate stereotypical/one-dimensional characters and second, grey is real life, right?
The result of the above is The Race Is On series or TRIO. The best sequence to read it in is as follows:
LEAP—Book 1—November 2003. You’ve never heard of Uma Jakobsdóttir. But she’s already rewritten you. You don’t know LEAP. But it knows you. Every cell. Every scar. Every secret you thought was yours. Everyone wants LEAP. And they’ll tear Uma apart to get it. In a world where identity is code and memory is property, survival means more than staying alive. It means holding on to what makes you human.
Green Ray—Book 2—November 2009. After the near-catastrophic hijacking of LEAP, Uma Jakobsdóttir is determined to find a safer path to environmental salvation. Until the capabilities of LEAP are discovered by the U.S. government, and the rules of the game suddenly shift again—leaving Uma in ethical turmoil as she races to stop the full power of LEAP from being unleashed on an unsuspecting world…
ATOM INC—Book 3—April 2010.LEAP is finally about to spell the end of global warming. That is until, Ethan is dragged back into a nightmare he thought he had escaped. One that may finally claim his sanity, and that pushes Uma to the limits of hers, to defeat an evil that no longer plays by the rules.
Godwin's Revenge—Book 4—July 2014. Nine billion LEAP gates power a cleaner planet, whilst Uma sinks into despair — forever haunted by Ethan’s selfless sacrifice and regretting her decision to have his children. As a series of gruesome murders threaten to overturn her sanity, Uma can come to only one conclusion: there is more than coincidence at work here. For Ethan, it seems, death is no barrier to revenge…
