LetsChat

LetsChat is a novel of techno-science, romance, and abuse set in early 21st century Asia. Combining science fiction and romance, it tells the story of Li-An, a girl who escapes a terrible family situation and a failed romance to join an experiment which stops the aging process. At a laboratory beneath a tropical resort in the Asian city-state of Kramen Island (modeled on contemporary Singapore), Li-An's drug therapy triggers painful flashbacks and cryptic visions of the past and future. The enigmatic Professor Evans, his lab assistant Samantha, and her clone Clarissa, send her on a mission to reproduce by age 40, in order to verify the heritability of her altered genes. Li-An searches for love in an ageless body, but becomes caught in a triangle with two Chinese men, "Grey", a suitor approved by her handlers, and "White", a much younger man whom she meets serendipitously, and then communicates with over the social media platform LetsChat. Neither knows her secret.

Her continuing visions also lead Li-An to a hidden Chinese archive, where she discovers that the Kramen Island experiment is linked to a much earlier and more ambitious utopian project, called The World of Realms. As she follows its history from the China of the Cultural Revolution, to a valley in north Wales, and eventually into the stratosphere, she realizes that the past events she's uncovering are somehow linked to her own fate. Her growing love for White may be key to her salvation. But their relationship is mediated by LetsChat, which masks many realities. She's running out of time, and the repercussions of not completing her mission are potentially fatal.

The novel combines sci-fi elements with scenes realistically describing the complex reality of life for many young women in authoritarian Asian societies, and in an age of love relationships increasingly sustained at a distance through social media.