Welcome to my novel: Anti-Virus

The story so far

A few years before the actual pandemic, I started writing a novel about a post-pandemic world.

Welcome to Anti-Virus.

The novel

Set in the UK, the country has been carved up. Scotland is already independent and Wales, suddenly and shockingly, shuts its borders overnight. If you know anything about the UK, you’ll know that these issues are merely an extrapolation of what is going on today.

The novel is about corruption, corporate greed, immigration, bad actors and proxies. It is also about small, everyday human lives. It’s not so far from the global dystopia we are embroiled in now.

I wrote and wrote and then Life got in the way. My career suddenly went into overdrive, commuting became ever more exhausting, my dad died, I was diagnosed with a chronic auto-immune condition, I nearly lost my eyesight. Stuff happened.

The pandemic

Then, enter the actual pandemic. I was lucky enough to be able to work from home. I saved 4–5 hours commute time a day. Amongst the bonfire that the world was turning into, I gained time and physical and mental space to pick up the dusty manuscript and rework it. Plus I was on the list of critically vulnerable people so I was pretty much house bound for many months. What else could I do but lose myself in my imagination once more?

I self-published Anti-Virus in 2021. I know it wasn’t the only pandemic novel to hit the digital bookshelves, but you know what, that’s fine. My pride was in completing it, having it edited, designing a cover and holding my physical book in my hands.

The pen name

I wrote it under a pen name because I wanted to keep it entirely separate from my career. I used to work in a very niche capacity in a very niche business. My personal life had to be kept away from that. This enabled me to give free reign to my thoughts, my imagination and also create a persona around the author that was me, but magnified.

Where can you buy Anti-Virus?

My novel is available on Amazon. There haven’t been many sales, which of course is a marketing fail of my own making. I hit the sweet spot of having lots of time to work on getting the book out there, but then going back to the office became a ‘thing’ once more and the horrendous commutes ate up my energy and time. It is what it is. Next time, I’ll do better.

The thing is, I am very proud of what I achieved. I am proud of the story, I am proud of the good reviews I received.

I am proud.

The future

Whilst writing another novel isn’t in my short-term timeline at the moment, it is a more long-term aim. I have a plan for a sequel to Anti-Virus and also a draft of a fantasty-dystopia crossover waiting in the wings.

It will come.

If you would like to immerse yourself in a literal dystopian world to take your mind off our actual dystopian world, I would be delighted if you bought a copy of my novel. The blurb is below, to whet your appetite!

‘Britain no longer exists.

What’s left behind certainly isn’t great, but it’s bearable — just. Illegal immigrants are a constant threat and in a world rocked by pandemic, they are far from welcome. The country’s borders are well and truly closed and surveillance and searches are the norm. It’s a price worth paying, so they say.

Callie Hannigan has only ever worked for the Security Services, it’s all she knows, as is the Sickness. She’s committed to her job, to keeping the country safe from infection, to upholding the law. Day in, day out, that’s what she does.

Following a shock betrayal and a chance encounter, Callie is launched on her most critical mission yet, caught up in a desperate race against time. She’s still working for the government, but which one and why? And what can possibly be worse than a global pandemic?

The only thing Callie knows for sure is that millions of lives hang in the balance. And time is running out.

Welcome to the world of Anti-Virus.’

Thank you.