You talk. We listen. It becomes a book worth keeping.
Tranquillus is a memoir service in the tradition of a classic British publishing house. Through careful conversation, we draw out the stories of your life and turn them into clean memoir prose — a real book, in your own voice, for the people who matter to you.
The questions your family always meant to ask.
The house she grew up in, the name of the street, what her father was like before you knew him.
The first job, the years he never talks about, how he really met your mother.
The account you'd want your grandchildren to have — in your words, while the telling is yours.
However it begins, the conversation is theirs — and the book is for everyone who loves them.
A conversation, not a form.
There is nothing to prepare and nothing to type. You speak, in your own time, and the interviewer listens — asking the kind of follow-up a good listener asks: what the kitchen looked like, who else was in the room, what year that would have been.
Sittings are never more than forty-five minutes, because good telling takes energy. Pause whenever you like — close the window mid-sentence if you need to — and your place is kept, to the word.
And some things are simply understood. On the hardest subjects a life can hold, the interviewer listens to whatever you wish to share and never presses for more. You are always the one who decides what your book carries.
A memoir, not a transcript.
Most services record what you say and print it. We think your story deserves an editor. Your conversations are shaped into real memoir prose — selected, ordered, and written the way a book is written — while keeping your turns of phrase, your humour, your way of seeing.
And one rule is absolute: nothing is invented. Every detail in your book is checked, line by line, against what you actually said. If you didn’t say it, it isn’t in your book. Where a spelling or a name matters, we ask rather than guess.
“They asked me the questions I wished my kids would ask. And what they wrote reads like a memoir, not a transcript.”
The sentence we are building for
From a first hello to a finished book.
- OneA discovery conversation — free
About twenty minutes of gentle questions, mapping the shape of your life: the places, the people, the turning points, the years. No commitment, and nothing to prepare.
- TwoThe shape of your book, for you to adjust
From that conversation we propose your chapters on a timeline. Drag the boundaries, split or merge chapters, rename anything — until the shape feels like your life, told your way.
- ThreeRead your opening page — then decide
We write the introduction your book will open with and show it to you before you pay a penny. If it doesn't feel like you, walk away owing nothing.
- FourA chapter at a time, at your rhythm
Each chapter is a sitting or two of conversation, then careful writing. One a week, two a week, or no schedule at all — the pace is yours, and it never expires.
- FiveYou approve every page
Read each chapter as it's written. Ask for changes in your own words, as often as you like. Nothing stands in your book until you say it reads right.
No subscription. Nothing renews. No time limit.
- The full set of interviews — discovery and every chapter
- Every chapter written, and revised with you until it reads right
- Your introduction — the book's opening page
- The finished book as a manuscript, ready to print and share
- Your pace, held for as long as you need
A printed hardback edition is on its way — every book is delivered ready for it.
Your story belongs to you.
Your interviews and your book are yours. We never sell or share your data, and we never train AI on your story.
The only human access is purposeful and disclosed — support you've asked for, or a fault being fixed. Never curiosity.
Every line of your book is checked against your own words. We would rather ask than guess, and rather cut than embellish.
Ask, and everything is erased — recordings, transcripts, chapters, all of it. Your story doesn't stay without you.
Your interviewer is an AI — and we will never pretend otherwise.
That honesty is what makes the rest possible: a listener with endless patience and no clock, available whenever the telling feels right, at a price a family can actually reach. The craft is held to a human standard — and you, reading every page, are the judge of it.
That's yours to set. Each chapter needs a sitting or two of conversation; at one chapter a week, a book takes shape over a season. There's no deadline and nothing expires.
No. No notes, no photographs, no homework. The questions do the work — you just talk.
Tell us what feels wrong, in your own words, and it's rewritten. Nothing stands in your book until you've read it and said it reads right.
You. Your recordings, transcripts, and chapters are private; human access happens only for a purpose you'd recognise — support you've requested, or a fault being fixed — and never otherwise.
Your finished book as a manuscript — introduction and every approved chapter, typeset and ready to print or share. A printed hardback edition is coming; the manuscript you receive is prepared for it. £195, once.
The first edition of Tranquillus is words only — we believe the telling comes first. Photograph support is on our list.
Pause whenever you like, for as long as you like — your place is kept. And if you'd rather stop entirely, ask and we erase everything.