War By Other Means is my debut novel. I’m excited for you to read it, so here’s a wee teaser of what it’s about and its journey onto the page.

When an unmanned helicopter crashes into a field of wheat and exposes a government food weaponisation project, a reclusive cryptographer finds herself having to choose between complicity and allowing a national food crisis to unfold.

For many years this story was an unlabelled, dormant seed lurking deep in my mind. Years later, the desire to simplify the operations on my family’s farm triggered its germination, and it wasn’t long before self interest shifted to a wider curiosity.

A curiosity about how agriculture could feed our world’s burgeoning population, and how it would do so without destroying the planet in the process.

The fourth agricultural revolution is upon us…

It was late 2018, and that’s the story I wanted to tell. But I had a problem.

Initially, I had planned to write it as a non-fiction piece, embracing my academic and journalistic roots. However, I just couldn’t get it to work in a way that was interesting enough to hold my attention. If it wouldn’t keep me hooked, how would my readers fare? But I really wanted to explore and share this world. And so, with great trepidation, I ventured for the first time since school into the realm of fiction, and loved it.

To my surprise and delight, the story became so clear to me. The threads had been there all along; I just hadn’t used the right key to unlock and make sense of them. But once I had the right key, the story came; my protagonist introduced herself and welcomed me into her world.

The fourth agricultural revolution is upon us – embracing machine learning and artificial intelligence as it steps tentatively forwards.

How far will it go?

How far can it go?

How far should it go?

These three questions fuelled the development and evolution of the story, and yet at the heart of everything, there remains always the exploitative actions of humankind. And at the heart of War By Other Means stands one woman…

Her name is Cora Griffin.