Valya’s neural implant is great! The game-like app “Casual”, stabilized her mood disorder and helped her get pregnant, but new laws forbid her from using the device when she’s sole caregiver for her infant. Her gaslighting ex won’t help, and she can’t afford a nanny, so her obstetrician demands she weans off Casual before giving birth.

Despite a will to quit and a supportive new love-interest in her birthing class, disabling Casual turns Valya’s anxiety into full-blown panic attacks. Her only option for keeping her device turned on is to enroll in a controversial clinical trial that would place a tandem implant in the baby. Valya must decide whether she should attempt parenting without Casual or install a minimally tested device in her vulnerable child. 

Casual is a near-future sci-fi novel with the social science fiction of a Black Mirror episode, it draws on my own struggles with mental health issues exacerbated by pregnancy while addressing the fears many women experience about making the right choices for their unborn babies.