Speculative Writing Inspiration: Why I wrote "Welcome to Perfectville"

Writing speculative fiction can be a rewarding challenge. It allows me to explore new worlds, imagine different futures, and question what might be possible.

Welcome to Perfectville started with a simple question:What if we could create paradise on earth?

Not the glossy, filtered version of paradise, but something real. A place that is safe, beautiful, and intentional. A place where community exists without control. Where people belong without being trapped.What if we could build a community that wasn’t a cult?

When my husband and I moved to New Zealand to raise our children, it felt like we had found that place. It was clean, breathtakingly beautiful, and held at a distance from the chaos of the world by two vast oceans. For a while, New Zealand seemed like the answer to that question. A kind of living, breathing Perfectville.

But paradise, it turns out, is not a fixed idea.

As our children grew up, they began to see something we hadn’t. Where we saw safety, they saw limitation. Where we saw peace, they felt confinement. The very qualities that made the place feel like a haven to us made it feel small to them. Too quiet, too contained, with no edges left to push against.

That tension stayed with me.Between protection and restlessness.Between belonging and escape.Between utopia and something that starts to feel like a cage.

Welcome to Perfectville was born from that tension. It asks whether a perfect place can ever truly exist, or whether perfection, by its nature, demands a cost.

And more importantly:If we ever did build paradise… would we actually want to stay?