As an Emergency Ambulance Dispatcher with nearly a decade of NHS experience in the North West of England, my job relies on human instinct, hard-earned experience, and split-second judgments. But after one too many night shifts battling rigid control room software, the spark for //MERCY.exe was born.

I wanted to read a gritty thriller about AI taking over the emergency services, and when I couldn’t find one on the shelves, I had to write it myself.

The road to finishing this book was a brutal love-hate relationship. I learned the hard way that writing a thriller means being hyper-critical of your own work. After changing my mind and rewriting the ending about six different times, binning entire chapters of hard-fought words felt like killing a piece of myself.

It turns out, writing a thriller requires a bit of ruthlessness, but every lost page was worth it to get the story right.

I don’t have a fancy writing degree, an expensive publishing house, or a team of editors, just a laptop, a love for dystopian thrillers, and a story that just wouldn’t leave me alone. If you love fast-paced fiction that makes you look at the world a little differently on the drive home, this one is for you.