Author Emily Ashman released a poignantly relevant book exploring the extremes of the pandemic through the fictional character of Izzy Ibori and her family last last year and it has staggering similarities to recent global events.

Instead of using Covid 19, Ashman explored the effects of a deadly virus that caused its victims to hear dark voices within their heads. Throughout the book she touched on the idea of how pandemics have torn apart families and the potential for corruption of governments within stressful times.

Emily Ashman revealed in my interview with her that her inspiration for the Mayflies are Gathering came from:

‘A dream,’ she had a couple of years before covid hit, ‘that was really, really, vivid and it was the opening scene of the mayflies are gathering:’ she continued by stating, ‘I was standing at the end of this rural garden with this beautiful house behind and this river in front of me: and I knew I couldn’t leave the boundaries of the house because of an airborne virus.’

She jokingly said, ‘I basically dreamt lockdown!’

Ashman went on to complete a creative writing course through a literary agent as she stated that, ‘journalism is really different to creative writing’ and over the course of the study she completed the first draft of the book in 2019 and two months later Covid hit.

The process of writing and publishing the book was very long and took years before it was available to buy on 3rd of October 2022. She explained that the book was changed over 3 times till the plot was finally settled on, yet Ashman emphasized that the characters never changed and were the same throughout all the edits.