I was 14, had my head in the skies one afternoon during a car ride home from school, when the plot for ‘Soul of a Butterfly’ hit me. There’s just something about staring blankly out of a window that really gets the mind working, y’know. So anyways, the very minute I reached home, I dashed inside to jot down my ideas, feeling a sense of excitement that I’d never in my entire 14-year old existence ever experienced before. Buzzing with ideas, I hashed out the blurb of the book onto paper. That blurb, to this day, has never largely been changed and is currently present on the back of the book.

My inspiration? To put it simply, high school. The realm of teenagers. Who doesn’t want to be popular in high school? And yet, what if one who had gained that standing, that esteemed rank of ‘Queen bee’, that popularity stamp that is craved by so many, were threatened? Not by a rival, not by a ‘new girl’, but by the introduction of something unfamiliar, taboo and even alien to some – Islam. Just the thought of delving into a life seen as ‘perfect’ and shaking its foundations to the core intrigued me and drew me in, and before I knew it, I had met Katie Anderson. And the rest was history.