Introducing Aroha, Dan William’s first novel (2020)
WHAT IS YOUR BOOK ABOUT?
Joanna’s fine with her random urges. She’s confident in her ability to paint masterpieces that fetch millions in a world of shrinking coasts, violent storms and all but outlawed paper. She’s clueless about everything else and the discovery that, although dead, her mother Aroha is far from gone and largely disapproving of her choices, is just another thing to worry about. Aroha is an anomaly with shaky mental health, a soul without a body who can still touch the world, but probably shouldn’t. She has awaited her daughter’s return home for 24 years and is none too happy with the lazy, messy, pot-smoking result. As if things weren’t hard enough, without a mortal body to help manage her phantom physical urges, Joanna’s new boyfriend Tristian, with his loose wandering soul and tight morals, presents an awkwardly arousing distraction. A distraction from the secret Aroha desperately wants to hide from Joanna…
WHY SHOULD WE READ IT?
Realistic characters just doing what people do against an unselfconscious science fiction/fantasy backdrop. This is not a book about spells, tech and tools. It’s a book about humans and relationships and how they deal with the changes brought about in the world by spells, tech and tools.
TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT YOURSELF
Dan Williams grew up in New Zealand before moving to the United Kingdom where he lived for over two decades, until moving to China months before the COVID 19 outbreak. Just as he planned! (Well, not really…). After a while, he moved back to the UK. Before Google was invented, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and well after punch-cards weren’t a thing anymore, Dan qualified and worked in information technology and, later, psychotherapy, which is like debugging people’s brains. Now he’s learning Mandarin and writing books. A lifelong avid reader of psychology, science fiction and fantasy, Dan looks forward to contributing many more of his works to the world’s store of fascinating and entertaining tomes in these genres.
Find more about his works on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and website.
Editor Note: Besides Aroha, Dan has also published a brand new novel in February 2023, The Dreaming Crystal (genre: hard fantasy/hard sci-fi). You can read more about it here: https://notforvanity.com/2023/09/06/self-promo-2023-ep-26-dan-williams/
