My new book, On A Starlit Ocean, is out today. It’s been a little over a year since my last, and this one is a little different for a few reasons. So I’m doing the slightly obnoxious thing of doing a Q&A with myself … if it’s good enough for Matthew Reilly, I figured it’s fair game :)

Is On A Starlit Ocean part of the Walker-Bell Saga?

Yes and no. I originally wrote the story’s first draft after Crystal Creek (Book 3 of the Walker-Bells). Before I began, I had in mind it would be Travers’ story, but as I wrote it became apparent that this wasn’t that story. So, you will find one minor recurring character, and the hero Dr Bell is a distant cousin of Daniella (Ryders Ridge, Book 1), but for all other purposes you can read this as a stand alone.

Where did the story come from?

Sailing has been a long time passion for me, and when I first wrote this story, I was fresh off a trip to the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, skippering a yacht (read: packing it that I was responsible for not damaging the yacht) with my husband and two friends. We sailed around azure water bays, wandered on unpopulated beaches, watched penguins and dolphins, and tried not to snag the keel on hidden rocks. I remember listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkle. After a few days of worrying the boat will drag the anchor overnight, sailing settles into a kind of zen that I haven’t found in any other part of life. There’s something about being commanded by the wind and tide, an essential need to go with things as they are happening, that’s restful.

Our boat, anchored in Oke Bay, after climbing the hill.

As far as a story went, I wanted to write Erin’s story, someone who is the exact opposite - restless after an event that happened four years ago and drove her from home. The whole story is about restlessness really … a businessman who can’t be satisfied (the “old flame”), a capable and good-hearted doctor who is secretly drifting (the “new man”), the unsettling legacy of a secret on a sister and mother … even a restless ghost from the island’s past and the artist who paints her. Of course, the story is then about bringing those many unsettlings to rest.

I had also done a bit of yacht racing, which is pretty exciting (at least, if the wind is blowing). And both sides of sailing come together with a complicated romance in On A Starlit Ocean..

Yacht racing now … that involves being up at all hours for your watch shift, and doing radio call-ins while dressed in becoming safety gear.

But … sometimes you win! (at least a minor placing). With the crew of the 2012 Brisbane to Keppel Yacht Race Southern Cross Yachting Team. Oh, you get a pineapple for finishing, that’s why we have one.

Is the island based on a real place?

On A Starlit Ocean features a paradise of a tropical island (whose beauty is no exaggeration if you’ve never had the pleasure of a Queensland island!). It’s absolutely inspired by a real place - Great Keppel Island, off Yeppoon on the Queensland coast. Like the island in the book, the resort there was a victim of the non-viability of island resorts once the airlines sold them off. I’ve heard recently it might be being redeveloped. Maybe.

… so, what happened to Twenty-Six Letters?

If you’re a long time reader of my Facebook or blog, you’ll know that I’ve been floating Twenty-Six Letters as my next book - a stand-alone, cross-generational women’s fiction saga that centres on twenty-six lost letters from a long-dead mother to her daughter.

This book hasn’t gone away, but it’s lead time did increase. I am looking for a new publishing home for it, and it needs to go through a good editorial process. I have a structural report, so that can begin soon. I utterly love the story, so it will be coming. But I’d been working on On A Starlit Ocean last year, so it happened to be ready first.

Where can I find the book?

All the details on the ebook or paperback are here. Please get in touch with me if you have any trouble. :)