Matthew Gerdes-Hansen writes urban fantasy with the emotional weight of literary fiction — and founded FND CONNECT CIC so people living with Functional Neurological Disorder can find clear information, practical tools, and real-world support that the system too often fails to provide.
The WildHearts Saga
The Girl Who Cracked the Veil
Wren Ashvale has always felt too much. Her emotions do not just affect her — they reshape the hidden world beneath Hull. When the Veil begins to crack, she must decide whether to silence her heart or become the voice that changes everything.
The Choir beneath the City
The Veil is singing louder. Wren's voice has awakened something ancient in the heart of the city. As the Network spreads and old friends become enemies, she must decide who she is willing to become to protect those she loves.
Adaptation Potential
WildHearts has the shape producers look for: a strong central heroine, a found-family ensemble, a city with a supernatural underworld, a visual magic system, and enough mapped mythology to sustain books, seasons, games, and film.
The story starts intimate, then opens out: school corridors, docks, bridges, old streets, rebel networks, ancient power, and a city that begins to answer back.
The Veil Is Real
WildHearts is set in a version of Hull where an ancient magical force called the Veil runs beneath the city. It is powered by emotion, song, and memory. Those born Wild can hear it, shape it, and in rare cases break it.
A spreading system of connection and pressure, where voice becomes both refuge and threat.
A dangerous force tied to power, rupture, and control in the saga's visual and emotional language.
The sound beneath the city, gathering individual pain into something collective and impossible to ignore.
Visuals & Film
Trailer concepts, cinematic stills, maps, chapter illustrations, and spot art all extend the same mythology: rain on brick, red threads of power, mirror fractures, and the city pressing back.
Author · Founder · Director
Born in Carshalton, Surrey and raised in the village of Belmont just outside Sutton, Matthew has always been drawn to hidden layers beneath ordinary places.
He moved to Selby in North Yorkshire at 26, spent time in Reading, Berkshire, and settled in Hull in 2024, where the industrial edges of the city and the wild energy of the Humber began shaping the world of WildHearts.
He founded FND CONNECT CIC after watching two people he loves — his fiancée, Emma, and his stepdaughter — face Functional Neurological Disorder with almost nowhere practical to turn. Living alongside their very different symptoms, triggers and daily struggles made the gaps in information, tools and support impossible to ignore. That is why he built FND Connect: plain-English education, community, digital tools such as SeizeControl, and a charitable path toward mobility aids and therapies that people with FND often cannot access through the NHS.
He is also the founder of Hull Digital, a creative technology studio, and spends his time between writing, building digital experiences that serve real people, and exploring the strange, beautiful, and sometimes frightening corners of the places that have shaped him.
Founded by Matthew · FND CONNECT CIC
I founded FND Connect after watching two of my family — my fiancée, Emma, and my stepdaughter — both face Functional Neurological Disorder with very little clear information or practical support to turn to. Living alongside their very different triggers, symptoms and daily struggles gave me a first-hand view of just how much is missing for people with FND and the people who love them.
My aim is simple and ambitious: a genuinely caring community, backed by honest easy-to-understand content, practical digital tools, and charitable funding for the therapies and mobility aids that fluctuating symptoms often leave people unable to get through the NHS. Supporting people on their worst days — not only on the days when they fit a form.
Plain-English information about FND so people, families, schools and employers are not left guessing after diagnosis.
A place where lived experience is respected — reducing isolation, disbelief, and the weight of invisible illness.
Digital tools such as SeizeControl that help people track symptoms, spot patterns, and walk into appointments prepared.
Fundraising for mobility aids, home adaptations, assistive tech, and additional therapies that fall outside standard NHS pathways.
FND Connect is the organisation and platform. SeizeControl is one of its tools: the same mission, one home, so people living with FND do not have to hunt across separate sites for support and tracking.
Community Interest Company · Co. 17313147
Education, advocacy, emotional support and community connection for people living with Functional Neurological Disorder — plus a charitable mission to help fund mobility aids and additional therapies the NHS cannot always provide.
Symptom & seizure tracking · inside FND Connect
Originally developed as a focused tracking tool, SeizeControl now lives inside FND Connect. Log seizures and symptoms, spot triggers and patterns, track periods for hormonal correlation, and generate reports that support conversations with GPs and specialists — all within the same trusted home.
Non-Fiction · Lived Experience · Published by FND Connect
There are illnesses that people understand instantly. And then there are illnesses like Functional Neurological Disorder — conditions that leave people fighting battles nobody else can fully see. This book exists for those people.
Living Well with FND is a 25-chapter guide to understanding, surviving, and rebuilding life with FND. It is not toxic positivity or a miracle cure story. It is about learning how to survive, stabilise, adapt, and rebuild compassionately inside a difficult nervous system — and one of the ways the wider FND Connect mission is funded and shared.
"You are not broken. You are surviving something incredibly difficult."
All proceeds from Living Well with FND go directly into FND CONNECT CIC — expanding education and tools, building charitable support for mobility aids and therapies, and helping people living with Functional Neurological Disorder feel less alone. Every copy sold supports the mission.