When Clara Loveman wrote her first book Crowns of Crowns two years ago she came up with some dramatic fictional situations to challenge her heroine - including a dangerous virus sweeping the world and a background of political activism.

Two years later with a pandemic affecting everyone's lives and Black Lives Matter dominating the headlines her book could not be more timely. But getting it published was another matter.

Clara, 38, who lives in the Castle Hill area of Maidenhead with her husband Chris and five-year-old son Charlie, said: "I had acquired two agents. Things looked promising but everything moves so slowly in the publishing world it was looking like it would be 2022 before it happened, at a time when the book suddenly seemed to reflect what was happening now."

So she took the leap and is self publishing.

Clara was born in Nairobi and is the proud holder of joint British and Kenyan citizenship. She came here 20 years ago to study, has a master's degree in public health and a job as head of access and strategy for an international pharmaceutical company.

Her novel is a romantic fantasy with elements of sci-fi as a girl from a noble family falls for a handsome and clever man from the 'lower orders' as disease and potential rebellion stalk her world.

Clara said: "I started off thinking it would be set on earth but decided to leave a blank space. It is a world where the rich control everything and live in a bubble, which also seems to reflect our world now. It is weird."

Clara says she wrote her first story at 13. But studies, a career and a family intervened.

Then the urge to write reemerged.

She said: "I feel at one when I'm writing. It feels like this is what I should be doing.

"The stories just kept coming to me and I knew this was a passion that would not stop.

"I have already written a sequel to Crown of Crowns."

You can find her book on Independent, Ingram Spark as paperbackor eBook - ISBN: 9781838062330.

Price: £9.99 PB £4.99 EB