David Alan King, writes like someone handed him a clipboard at the edge of reality and said, “Please explain the universe,” and he replied, “Fine, but I’m going to be funny about it.”

He’s the author of The Infinitium, a satirical metaphysical series that takes the afterlife, the beforelife, and the awkward bit in-between, then runs them through a bureaucratic machine with a personality problem. Think cosmic doors, soul paperwork, strange rules, and the unsettling feeling that your thoughts might be little glimpses of other versions of you doing something slightly more impressive, or at least more organised.

David lives on the Isle of Wight, where the sea is beautiful, the weather is moody, and the universe has plenty of space to whisper ridiculous ideas at inconvenient moments. When he’s not writing, he’s deeply embedded in the real world too, the world of people, stories, and everyday magic, including his work in the metaphysical and holistic space. It turns out that when you spend time around seekers, sceptics, mystics, and the occasional person who definitely saw a ghost in the stockroom, you gather material.

His brain runs fast. There’s usually music playing in it, constantly, and while writing The Infinitium each chapter effectively arrived with its own theme tune. He also has the particular combination of analytical wiring and imaginative chaos that means he can think like an architect while behaving like a man who has been left unsupervised near a doorway labelled “Do Not Open.”

He writes with sincerity and cheek in equal measure, because he’s not interested in being “spiritual” in the incense-and-whispers sense. He’s interested in truth that lands. The kind that makes you laugh, then makes you stare into the distance for a moment like you’ve just remembered something important, but you can’t quite prove it yet.

If you’re looking for polished certainty, there are plenty of authors for that.

If you’re looking for a story that doubles as a mirror, with jokes to stop it getting preachy, welcome, you’re in exactly the right place.