First Published Novel

Wow! It has definitely been a whirlwind experience publishing ‘The Gamble’. The path was so different from what I expected. Let me give you a bit of background to the situation. I usually write paranormal romance but in early 2018 I went on a WW1 battlefield tour of France. While I was there, we visited a war cemetery for those who died at Fromelles. Our tour guide led us to the graves of two brothers, aged 16 and 19, and told us their story. Apparently, the older brother had enlisted as soon as he could, but the younger was left in Australia. A young lady (obviously not particularly nice) who the boy had feelings for, gave him a white feather. This was a sign of cowardice and used to bully men into enlisting, only the boy was under age. He enlisted anyway by falsifying his documents, and was promptly killed in his first battle. But not after first seeing his older brother, who died at the same time.

All I could think about was-‘what would the older brother do if he had managed to return home?’ So I wrote it. And I pitched it at the RWAus 2019 conference in Melbourne. And Boroughs Publishing Group in the US picked it up. So now my first published novel is an Australian Historical Romance and I’m a little surprised about it. Good surprised, but it came totally out of the blue.