I was recently invited to be the guest author on board a P&O cruise along Australia's north-east coastline for just over a week. The experience of talking to readers before, during and after they read my novel, Pescador's Wake, reminded me why I'm doing this writing thing. To connect with readers. To share stories. To find resonances. It was a timely reminder, as, now that I'm up to my eyeballs in writing my second book and again wrestling with what feels like an Everest of a project, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the reason behind the hours spent in solitary confinement at our desks! The resonances, and the fact that (in all honesty) we love writing fiction and can't stop, even if we wanted to. While the international rights to my debut novel have not yet been sold, it can be ordered from Australian bookshops and quite large chunks of it can be read online on the HarperCollins Australia website. If you connect with the stories in the book, or just feel like connecting with a writer staring down the barrel of 'the second book', I'd love to hear from you.