Why I Wrote Mathatar

Making

Why I Wrote a Story Where Maths Holds Reality Together

Mathatar began with a simple question:

What if something stole our Maths from the past?

What if maths wasn’t just a school subject, but one of the keys holding reality together?

That idea has stayed with me for years.

Before Mathatar became a book, it was a educational computer game. Back in 2016, I developed a maths teacher training programme that also taught children to learn maths differently.

I didn’t want maths to feel cold, intimidating or limited to right and wrong answers. I wanted it to feel active, human, exciting and full of discovery. We made Mathatar, a computer game.

The original project had characters, visuals, concepts and even a playable demo. The business behind it didn’t survive.

But the idea did.

For years, Mathatar sat in the background of my mind: the thought that maths could be experienced as a world, not just studied as a subject. A world where numbers, patterns, measurement, shape and logic mattered because the story itself depended on them.

Then, a few months ago, I woke at around three in the morning with one clear thought:

Mathatar was not waiting to become a game.

It was waiting to become a book.

More than that, it was waiting to become a series. The first of five books has been written and is with agents for submission.

Maths as adventure

In Mathatar, maths is not just a lesson on a timetable. It is the framework beneath reality.

Numbers. Patterns. Measurement. Shape. Proof. Order.

So when maths begins to slip, reality slips with it.

A digital clock loses digits.
A shopping list changes meaning.
A decimal point moves.
A small error becomes something much more frightening.

I loved the idea that a child could notice the world going wrong in tiny, almost ordinary ways, and gradually realise these mathematical distortions are not random mistakes.

They are symptoms of something quite mysterious. Someone is STEALING our maths…

Why maths?

I didn’t want to write a book that simply says, “maths is useful.”

Children hear that all the time.

“You’ll need this one day.”
“It’s important.”
“You use it more than you think.”

All of that may be true, but it does not always make maths feel alive.

Stories can do something different.

A story can take an idea that feels intimidating and give it danger, humour, mystery, friendship and emotional meaning. It can let a reader approach something difficult without feeling as though they are being tested.

Because maths is not only about answers.

It is about how human beings learned to make sense of the world.

How many?
How far?
How long?
How much?
What changed?
What stayed the same?
How do we know something is true?

Those questions are ancient, practical, creative and deeply human.

They are part of the beginning of civilisation.

In fact, learning how to solve mathematical problems may well be the most important skill mankind ever learnt. Apart from creating fire, hunting, irrigation (some maths required!) and domesticating animals.

But maths teaches us to solve problems, and that’s a mighty important skill.

A story first

One of the most important decisions I made was that Mathatar had to be an exciting adventure, first and foremost.

Maya does not enter the portal because she wants a maths lesson.

She steps through because something is wrong. Because someone she loves is in danger. Because Fella, her grandfather’s fox-red Labrador, has charged into the unknown and she follows, because, well, who wouldn’t follow a dog they loved if they thought they were in danger?

That matters.

Children are very good at spotting when a story is secretly a worksheet in disguise.

I didn’t want that.

I wanted ancient cities, strange machines, danger, friendship, humour, fear and discovery. I wanted readers to care about Maya, Aya, Fletcher, Grandad and Fella before they realised how much mathematical thinking was woven through the story.

The maths had to matter because the characters mattered.

Confidence, not cleverness

At its heart, Mathatar is about confidence.

Not the loud kind.
Not the kind that says, “I am brilliant at everything.”
The quieter kind.

The moment a child thinks:

I might be able to understand this.

That matters to me. Even more so, the idea:

Maybe maths is worth learning.

So, IF Mathatar can get children thinking they want to find out more about maths, just from getting them intrigued buy reading the book, then it’s worth it.

In the book, Maya does not have all the answers. She is brave, but unsure. Curious, but often overwhelmed. She has to notice things, ask questions, make mistakes, listen, adapt and keep going.

Fletcher, despite being deaf and wearing a cochlear implant, still has a positive attitude towards life and is also no maths wizard.

Many children do not need to be told they are geniuses. They need to be shown that they could, possibly, understand a subject. And sometimes, they need to have a reason to want to understand it.

I want Mathatar to give them that reason.

Maths can become frightening when it feels like a place where only the naturally gifted belong. But maths did not begin that way.

It began with people trying to understand life.

Counting. Measuring. Comparing. Recording. Predicting. Building. Sharing.

That belongs to all of us.

Why ancient history?

The first Mathatar story reaches back into the ancient world because I wanted readers to see maths as part of the human journey. It’s a fundamental element of our very existence.

Before calculators, screens, whiteboards and exams, there were people trying to solve real problems.

How much grain is in the storehouse?
How do we divide land?
How do we measure time?
How do we build something that will stand?
How do we record what matters?
How do we pass knowledge on?

That is not boring.

That is survival.

By sending Maya into the past, the story allows her to encounter mathematical ideas before they became school topics. She sees them as living ideas, shaped by need, imagination and discovery.

Every symbol, method and concept we use today has a history.

Someone counted.
Someone noticed a pattern.
Someone made a mark.
Someone asked a better question.

There’s a deep history to maths, that most of us don’t know. I want to get people interested in how and why maths needed to be discovered and how it materially affected our past and how it is such an integral part of our lives today, even if most people don’t realise it.

Making maths feel magical

The challenge was to make maths feel magical without pretending that maths is magic.

In Mathatar, the fantasy sits around the mathematics. But the wonder comes from the truth underneath it.

A position of a number can change meaning.
A pattern can reveal something hidden.
A measurement can protect people, rights, families.
A proof can hold an idea in place.
A small mistake can have enormous consequences.

That is already extraordinary.

The story simply turns the volume up.

It asks what would happen if the principles behind maths were visible. What would happen if someone tried to steal them. What would happen to the world if maths started disappearing?

For the child who thinks maths is not for them, that it is boring.

The reader I often think about is the child who has given up on maths, having decided that maths is not for them.

Not because they can’t, but because somewhere along the line they had too many moments of feeling embarrassed, lost, rushed or left behind. And gave up.

I know my story cannot fix everyone on its own.

But if it can ignite some interest, it can create a new doorway.

It can make a reader curious before they feel judged. It can show that not understanding something immediately is not failure.

If a reader finishes Mathatar and thinks, I never realised maths could be like that, then the book has done something worthwhile.

If they go one step further and think, maybe I can understand more than I thought, then it has done exactly what I hoped.

Why I had to write it

For years, Mathatar existed as an unfinished idea from another version of my life.

A game.
A training concept.
A world that almost happened.

But perhaps it needed time.

Perhaps I needed time.

When I finally saw it as a book series, everything clicked into place. The idea had not disappeared because it was never only about a product or a business.

It was about a belief.

That people can engage deeply with big ideas when those ideas are wrapped in story, character and consequence.

That maths is not cold or boring.

That confidence can be rebuilt.

That learning can feel like discovery.

That the history of human thought is full of wonder.

And that sometimes, the thing you thought had failed was simply waiting for its true form.

That is why I wrote a story where maths holds reality together.

Because in many ways, maths does hold our understanding of reality together.

It helps us describe the stars, build bridges, follow music, measure medicine, design cities, understand nature and ask better questions. Maths is an essential element of our lives, of nature of civilisation itself. Not lifeless.

Astonishing.

Human.

And that is where Mathatar begins.