We have lift off (well, sort of!)

Today marks the official launch of my new book Sea Changed - about my search for truth, peace and healing. I had hoped to be with friends celebrating the launch at a special event at the Holy Trinity Brompton in London but instead, I am somewhat ironically I am instead laid up in bed the flu.

I am however celebrating in my own way, as I never thought I would live to see this day.

Words have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was brought up in an intensely literary household; my mother was initially a top Fleet Street journalist and became a bestselling author, while my father was an intense and rather eccentric poet. His sister in is an author and his father was a playwright.

Daunted by my antecedents I opted at an early age for the visual arts instead and had a rather short and unsuccessful career as a sculptor before being seduced once again by the word – first into the world of public relations and then into that of journalism.

Like most journalists, I was always convinced that there was a book somewhere within me. On various occasions I came up with what seemed like a bright idea. Encouraged by my parents, I would then research the market, lay out the plot of my book, think about how to gear my concept towards a specific target audience and then became discouraged by the number of competitors and shelve yet another half written manuscript.

So the fact that I now have a publisher who believed in me enough to publish and promote my book is all the more surprising, since Sea Changed was not planned. On this occasion, I didn’t’ research the market or storyboard the plot - in fact I never expected this book to be published let alone survive to see it on sale.

I actually wrote Sea Changed while going through treatment for advanced inoperable breast cancer. Much of the text was written sitting up in bed on a lap top while I was either receiving, or recovering from, chemotherapy. I wrote the book initially as a legacy for my children. I wanted them to know how much God loved me and how he had stood by me, even as I potentially prepared to leave them.

But then God did something miraculous in my life – and Sea Changed became about something much bigger; encouraging others to do, as I had done – to look back over their lives, to read the map of their existence and to recognize where God’s unseen hand shifts alters our trajectory or lifts us up even in our darkest moments.

I was recently asked what advice I would give to an aspiring author - a question that really gave me pause for thought. The received wisdom is that you should research the market and write with sales in mind but my actual advice that I gave was to write from the heart and depths of your faith.

I spent so many years thinking about which stories would appeal to different markets but my heart just wasn’t’ in it. But in the midst of the greatest challenge that God has given me, when I was so ill that I could barely type, the words just flowed out of me.

Years ago I decided that I had three life goals:

• to know God
  
• to love and be loved
  
• and to leave something behind that would help others to experience God’s love . . .
  

. . . but it took a cancer diagnosis to turn me into an author.

I certainly don’t’ think that all aspiring authors need to contract a life threatening illness but it is worth asking yourself – if I could leave behind just one story, what would it be? And then write as if your life depended on it; writing honestly, prayerfully and from the heart – in the hope that your words will strengthen the faith of those who read it – and you will be relevant.

Sea Changed is now available at Christian book stores throughout the UK and online at eden.co.uk or on Amazon.