Six childhood friends. A Pact made in Geneva. A pandemic prophecy that could devastate the world.
Growing up in cosmopolitan Geneva in the early 1990s, six children from very different corners of the world were brought together by the strange gravity of the city's international schools. The Grooters, that's what they called themselves, shared something more than friendship. They had global roots, extraordinary abilities, and a front-row view of what was going wrong in their parents' generation: failing marriages, addiction, financial ruin, lives that quietly came apart. So they made a Pact: when they grew up, they would find solutions, no matter what it took.
Twenty-five years later, in early 2018, that childhood promise resurfaces. It begins with a warning of a pandemic that could ravage the world. During a blind date, Boss, the unofficial leader of the Grooters, is handed a mysterious photograph that sets the Pact in motion again, and time is running out.
To fulfil it, the six Grooters must track down the eccentric Professor Dimenport and his genius invention: a machine that lets them travel into their own Dream Worlds, parallel dimensions hidden in their subconscious minds. What they discover inside those worlds will lead them on a treasure hunt across continents for a set of powerful crystals, and toward a confrontation with things they've each been quietly avoiding about love, purpose, and the lives they thought they had to settle for.
Grooters: Book 1 is the first volume in a science-fiction adventure series for grown-ups, illustrated throughout in black and white. Set against the backdrop of pre-pandemic 2018, it follows six richly drawn characters from very different cultures as they grapple with questions readers will recognise: Am I living in the right place? Do I truly belong here? What if the life I was handed isn't the only one on offer?
For readers who loved imaginative book-worlds as children and teenagers, but have struggled to find that same scope and sense of wonder written for grown-ups, the Grooters series is built for you. Eighteen Dream Worlds across the first three books, a multicultural cast spanning five continents, an interlocking treasure hunt, and a story that pairs adventure on the surface with quiet philosophical depth underneath.
The series is supported by a separate Visual Companion of photorealistic character portraits and Dream World scenes, and a curated soundtrack drawn from music across cultures and languages. It is designed to make the Grooters universe feel as cinematic on the page as in the imagination.
Book 1 is the first of a planned five-to-six-book series, with more than three volumes already written.
"What would you do with eighteen lives to try?"
