Helena Duggan on the inspiration behind her best-selling A Place Called Perfect series

Helena Duggan has opened up about the inspiration behind her best-selling A Place Called Perfect series. 

The Kilkenny author’s latest book, The Battle For Perfect, was released earlier this year - it the third, and final, instalment in the A Place Called Perfect series.  And she told Her about the inspiration behind the series, what made her want to become a writer and what she is working on next.  “I was in Australia and, at the same time, I was working on another story [which hasn’t been published],” she recalled, as she discussed the inspiration behind her bestselling series. “I was in the middle of writing that when I went into an antique shop in Brisbane, where I bought a pair of small little wooden glasses with flexible ear bits; they were just gorgeous glasses.  “My idea was to change the lenses out and so I could use them myself. But I was broke at the time so I was just traveled around with them in my bag, and I never changed the lenses.”  But then one day, she explained that she  began to wonder about the history of the glasses - and it was that, with a bit of magic, that the idea for the A Place Called Perfect began.  “[One day] I was thinking about the person who owned them before, and I was thinking they were possibly dead - and I wondered, what if all the things they saw and did and all their memories, what if these glasses had stolen them? And if I got rid of the lenses, then would I be getting rid of anything that was left of this person in the world?” she said.  “I have a bit of an imagination. But that’s how the story started, that’s how I started to think about it.” And while the glasses may have help spark the idea for the A Place Called Perfect series, it turns out they have a neat tie-in to the books as well.  “There’s an address on the glasses box - I still have it - and it’s 135 Wickham Terrace. I’ve used that in stories; that’s where one of the main characters lives,” Helena recalled.  “Towards the end of the third book, I looked up the address on GoogleMaps. The whole three stories [in the Perfect series] revolve around eyes and the science of eyes. It turns out that the address in Brisbane is now [its] main eye hospital, so that’s kind of cool.”  The author also told Her about what made her want to become a writer - and how it wasn’t quite a direct path.  “I get asked that sometimes and I never really know how to answer. I always wrote, but I wanted to be lots of things,” Helena explained, admitting that she had been “fairly ambitious” with what she wanted to be when she was younger.  “I wanted to be everything I could possibly be. I thought I was going to be an actress; I thought I was going to be an Olympian - everything I thought I was going to be was very grand. I had a huge imagination,” she continued. “I always read and wrote stories but I never really thought about those stories becoming a book or anything.  “I lived in Australia and New Zealand for awhile. When I was living over in Australia, my sister gave me a present for my birthday of a little cow notebook, she said that I had to start writing again - I had stopped awhile, for a couple of years. “She told me to start again, and I signed myself up for a course in Melbourne and I started wiring a story then that got longer and longer - and then it kind of turned into a book.” “I think if I had decided I was writing a book, I would have scared myself,” she added with a laugh. The A Place Called Perfect series has been massively popular since it began in 2017. But Helena confirmed to Her that The Battle For Perfect will, in fact be the final chapter in the series.  “I planned it and plotted it, [plotting] is what I really like. But I plotted it for three, and I had sewn the plot into the first two. It was never plotted for more than three,” the author said.  “I think that sometimes, when I read a series and they’ve gone a book or two too far, the plot kind of drops away and you realise it wasn’t sewn in to the other stories,” Helena continued. “I couldn’t do that to the stories.” And while she has ruled out another book in the A Place Called Perfect series, she hasn’t ruled out the idea of revisiting some of the characters a bit more down the line - but this time, with a prequel series.  “I could write a prequel about some of the main characters when they were younger,” she told us. “But I won’t do that now, I want to do something new and then [maybe] go back to that.” In good news for fans of her work, the author is currently researching for a new series that she is working on.  “I don’t know how much I can share about it,” she admitted. “It’s going to be a longer series, it’s going to be four books.”