See also The Gene Pool: About | Extracts | Reviews | Other books by Debi Alper

This is the fifth and final novel in the Nirvana series. The first two, Nirvana Bites and Trading Tatiana, were originally published by Orion before being re-published by my Nirvana Publishing imprint, along with De Nada Nirvana and Me, John and a Bomb. It’s odd to be publishing this last Nirvana novel. I have to admit to feeling somewhat bereft. Nirvana Bites was originally published in 2002. The Gene Pool was written over a decade ago (though it’s been recently edited). I’ve lived with these characters for about 20 years and now the time has come to share them with the world – and to let them go.

When I began writing the lives of these people, I originally thought they would sustain a single novel. I had a two-book deal with Orion and when I started writing Trading Tatiana, focusing on a different main character narrator, my Nirvanan characters muscled their way back in, insisting they weren’t done yet. It was my agent, David Grossman, who suggested I should continue writing their story, saying he thought they were ripe for a TV series. And so De Nada Nirvana was born – the first novel I’d written in third person, following the lives of the narrators from the first two novels: Jen in South London and Jo in Spain. In this novel, Jen was pregnant, and the members of the Nirvana Housing Co-op were all learning and growing, continuing to do so in Me, John and a Bomb, where Jo had returned to the co-op and Jen and Ali were by now the parents of twins.

I didn’t know it at the time, let alone intend it, but, looking back over the five novels, I can see there’s an overarching arc for all the main characters. The members of my Nirvanan family, having established the power of non-blood relationships, were now ready to concede that blood-ties also matter. While the plot of The Gene Pool revolves around local government corruption, by the end of it, one thing was clear to me: my Nirvanans had grown up.

Although, theoretically, each of the novels can stand alone, my hope is that readers will have bonded with my Nirvana family over the whole series. They’re still out there somewhere, living their lives, but my time with them is done.