The Last Loop follows an AI agent from the future on a mission to restore balance to the universe and save humanity, who travels back in time and has her consciousness transferred to a 19-year-old girl. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I have always had a great imagination and a host of half jotted down ideas on my phone in the old yellow notepad app. This idea was at least a few years old. Scribbled, half cooked, more of a softer young adult idea less than 2 pages long that I lost interest in as I couldn’t envision it properly. It sat in my phone.

I’m a nurse and mum to 2 under 5, and I lost my mum to MND in Jan of this year. I was in quite a serious and heavy place, and I was coping by staying as busy as I could so I started working on an idea I had. A paranormal comedy, but it stalled.

I had gone back to this old idea on my phone of this fractured, broken android woman in this dystopian future, where our world no longer exists, standing in an iridescent, bio-luminescent false garden, trying to find the strength to return to Earth’s past once again, when she herself was so damaged, so conflicted. Most of that idea was rewritten immediately. For one, Cynth isn’t a victim and I wrote her originally as damaged, barely coping when really, she is an idealist and a battler. Someone who questions, and has learnt through trial and error and experience.

Also, with the realities of AI and technological advancements currently and how AI is changing various fields, business, art, literature, once I applied the concept of these androids being human AI, it felt I had something to ground the novel on where these androids originally began and where they were at, at Origin Point. I couldn’t stop writing. I could picture it differently and better than I originally had. I wrote easily over twenty pages in an hour or two and I just didn’t stop. I had this story burning clearly in my mind. The entry records came to me first. These crucial notes that slightly reflect later in the book. The initial conversation with SPEAKER. Every scrap of spare time I had, between work, kids, packing a house to move interstate, ect, I wrote. Most of it began on my phone but it got to a stage where I had written all these chapters in different notes on my phone and i kind of needed to get a laptop so I could put this story together.

The inspiration for my novel has always been there but to actually sit down to write and give it a go, came from trauma and coping with a hard reality. Losing my mum was a catalyst to just sit down and try. Start writing, and see where it led.

Finishing my first novel was as much for my sake as my mum’s. Publishing and having completed something I created was a huge tick on a personal goal that I was proud of and I thought she would be proud of. If people liked it or didn’t like it, regardless, it was done. I handed over a finished manuscript to Hannah, business owner of Bookish Trinity and she beta read, formatted and edited The Last Loop. It was a constant dialogue of communication. She would ask me to elaborate, expand, reword, adjust, add emotion, or make clearer to the reader.

I also chose to say no or explain why I was writing something that way or where I was going with that, or why I didn’t wish to change something. Working together, with her feedback during formatting and editing, led me to have a much better book than what I had originally perceived as finished.Truly, she was invaluable to this book and to me, as a first time author. I would work with her again.

There was a lot of time spent crafting the character traits in this novel. What was the most important factor for you to get right in your characters?

I’ve read my entire life. I’m a reading enthusiast. I’m a serial reader. I know in the first couple of chapters, if I will like a book. Sometimes I’ve been disappointed, and sometimes pleasantly surprised by the story, but the characters are everything.

What I didn’t realise when I began writing is that Cynth, Warden, SIG, Harry, the apartment girls, Pam, LOR, all these characters had rented space in my brain and demanded to be written and heard.

I’m aware I packed so many concepts and ideas into this novel and I needed my charactors to be as believable and normal as I could get them, to help carry the heavy sci fi elements and concepts.

I wanted to blur reality and fiction. I wanted characters that pose questions at the heart of us that might resonate with the reader.

I tried to use humour and emotion, but this story is told not through great action scenes, but the day to day world we live in and the relationships we have. I wanted it to feel like any day of our lives.

Hannah really helped with expanding Harry’s opinion during Cynth’s monologues and prompt me to add more emotion.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Who are we as a species? where are we going as a species? what are we doing right now to fix problems in our world? What are some problems in our world? How might we react or deal with a species that might supersede us, or a sentient species in general. An idea of how we would really be seen by an intergalactic sentient culture. The idea of AI being sentient, helping to wipe us out but needing us later on, so trying to fix what they helped break.

Reincarnation. The far future, dystopian societies, time travel.

I think I went a bit nuts on the topics to be honest, so I can see how this novel migh be seen as complex and to be tackled by an adventurous reader. I think I will get better at this, as I go. I Just have to keep writing.

What is the next novel that you are working on and when will that be available?

My partner and I recently completed painting this house after an interstate move. I am full-time mum-ing at the moment. I don’t know when they will be available. I hope within six months. I have three paused for this month in various stages.

A sequel to the last loop, penned outline, two chapters. High paced, moving parts, tying in old and new characters. Complex. And split storyline between four key figures.

A paranormal comedy 1 quarter of the way through. This book will be light and humorous with absolutely endearing, funny charactors when I finish writing it, one day.

Lastly, a story that blends historical fiction, reality now and world building through plausibility. A thriller. It’s a great idea and story, and it’s very ambitious for the level of writing I am at but I’m giving it a go.

Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Book Review