I've been making up stories since I was very young and make-believe was my favourite form of play. I learned to read when my older brother did and immersed myself in as many new worlds as I could find. After I read Watership Down at age 6, my Mum stopped worrying about encouraging me to read and started worrying about how to get me to stop.

I remember being told that the made-up worlds I loved were a child's conceit that I would need to grow out of if I wanted to succeed in life. The older I get, the more I realise how utterly wrong this is. In just the past few millennia, humans have moved from chipping tools out of stones to space exploration and heart transplants. Every step on that path was driven by someone who imagined something that didn't exist and someone who believed they could make it reality.

As an author, I want to do my part to bring back a feeling of optimism in the ability of humans to solve our own problems, to grow and become better than we are today.