The story is the imagined life of her grandparents, “who I only knew when I was too young to ask the right questions or even to be interested in the answers”.

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Sitting at her desk overlooking the Australian bush, Meryl has transported herself to her family’s history in Bombay (Mumbai) India and the county of Lancashire in the north of England.

“My grandfather was from Bombay and my grandmother from Manchester,” she told News Of The Area.

“I used Lancashire locations and both Bombay and Kolkata (Calcutta) as settings.”

Researching old shipping passenger records and accounts of journeys helped paint a picture of life during that time.

India itself was a little easier to write about, she said, as she had visited Kolkata with her mother and been to some of her old homes and haunts.

“Creating fiction from family history is always challenging but, in a way, I found this easier than my first novel “A Patient Obsession”, where the core of the tale I was partly witness to.

“For the new book, none of the relatives were living so I had free rein and didn’t need to think that someone might say ‘but it didn’t happen like that at all’.”

For her first book, Meryl successfully employed the disciplines recommended by the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) held every November, pledging to write 1500 words a day for 30 days to get down the majority of the narrative.

This international program encourages people to focus on their writing, without editing, to try to have 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Leaning in to the local writers community, the leader of the Nambucca U3A book club, Anne Norman, recently suggested a new program of monthly author talks.

“I was the first cab off the rank, as it were, and held my talk in February,” Meryl said.

“I shared the challenges of creating fiction from family history, creating a writing habit, support, editing, and sending your creation out into the world.”

She also talked about self-publishing and its advantages as did the March guest speaker, Nambucca-based author Annie Seaton.

While writing is being replaced by book talks and some overseas travel, Meryl’s mind is meandering.

“I am yet to start writing my third novel but have a few ideas percolating,” she said.

By Andrea FERRARI