I have been living with Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy for more than twenty-four years. By 2002 I had completed three law degrees and was working for the Government Employees Pension Fund as a legal adviser. From 2003 to 2014 I worked for the Financial Services Board (now the Financial Sector Conduct Authority) in a variety of roles from legal adviser to specialist analyst before my slowly progressive disease caused me to medically retire at the age of thirty-eight. For the past seven years, in-between the managing of my disability, my hobbies kept me busy. I wrote rock/metal and blues reviews for www.watkykjy.co.za under the pseudonym Rolbees and took up the challenge to write a speculative science fiction novel from the point of view of a character with the same genetic disease I had come to know and live with over the years. The Alienation Gene manuscript is the result of many years of perseverance, soul-searching, fun and learning.