Wendy Willett

As I'm not a great one for writing about myself I'll start with the reason why I wrote each of my first two novels. More than anything I wrote them out of curiosity and the excitement of following my characters as they picked their way through the challenges life threw at them. Challenges abound in all our lives and mine has been no different, for I have frequently changed my mode of living and my environment. My experiences whilst living on an island off the coast of Queensland, and of building and living on junk rigged cruising boats both in Australia and New Zealand, have coloured the backgrounds of these stories, and others I have written.

"Chin Up!" grew out of a short story I wrote early this century to explore the journey of a city child who has to live with an aging relative on a small island off the south-east Queensland coast. Once inside the child's life I couldn't leave because the relative turned out to be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers, and my heart rate would increase as the computer muttered and ticked into life each day.

How would the child handle the lack of attention to her needs and the way housework and cooking increasingly devolved on her shoulders? What about school when it became dangerous to leave the relative alone? And the shopping on the mainland? What about money? How would she, who so desired a home to belong to, cope if her relative needed to be in a caring situation and she herself could only go into the care of the State?

So many questions. How could I leave before the end? I kept writing, following her journey. As this child grew older but not old enough, the troubles would multiply and I wondered what she would do if the worst happened - to what desperate lengths would she go to stay out of the State's clutches?

"Deep Water Junk" arrived by another channel, and from the maritime side of my life, but the blame for its inception rests at the feet of non-conformity, a bug that bit me early.

I wanted to travel with a girl in her twenties who is bucking the system - the expectation that she should act, and live, in a conventional manner as required by her fiancé and his world. She would move onto a boat and give it a junk rig, both big challenges. The other ingredient I wanted to explore was how a girl who is terrified of the ocean or any water beyond her harbour would handle a new love when she doesn't want another man in her life, and definitely not one who lives for crossing oceans.

Years ago I fell for a man in a similar situation when I could get seasick on a swing. It was a tough ask to throw up a wonderful adventure living in my car and exploring a new country - New Zealand - in favour of the misery of seasickness on a small vessel that would be at sea for weeks.

At least my mal de mer wouldn't interfere with my ability to accompany my protagonist as she tackled a future stacked with difficulties and excitement. How would this girl reconcile her deeply rooted fear dating from childhood with her new but equally deeply rooted love? Fascinating.

Once started, the story rattled my heart strings, and imprisoned my brain.

Now to me, Wendy Willett. I was born in Australia's jewel state, Tasmania, and began making up stories before I started school. At the age of eleven, whilst living on a farm in the island's south, I decided to be a writer but life intervened for my family moved northwards and finally out of Tasmania altogether, first to various places in Queensland and then to New South Wales. I myself continued adventuring by relocating to New Zealand and exploring that country in a small station wagon.

After meeting a sailor who had recently crossed the Tasman on his own in a small yacht, I joined him in his adventuring which, over the years, led us to build, junk rig, and sail two boats, one a three-masted Chinese junk which we shared with a feline crew member. After years on these boats during which we cruised to many Pacific Islands, we moved ashore, choosing a small island so we didn't lose our contact with the marine environment. Later we junk rigged another two boats and lived on one for several years with another feline crew member who is still supervising our land based adventures.

Writing time finally arrived just after the turn of the century and I produced and published many short stories and poems before embarking on my two novels, "Chin Up!" and "Deep Water Junk".