Hey there . . . 

I fell in love with story as an eight-year-old, when I sat wide-eyed, listening to my teacher read Charlotte’s Web. Even then, the aspect of the story that had me most engrossed was the off-the-page romance developing between Fern and Henry Fussy. I absorbed every word of that book, and ever since, I've been passionate about story and the romance genre.

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My next moment of inspiration hit when I was nine and learned about Carly Little, the teenage author of 101 Excuses for Not Doing Homework. When I saw that book on the shelves in my local bookshop, I vowed that I, too, would be an author before I reached adulthood. Things didn't pan out that way, of course — I was in my early thirties before I started writing in earnest — but I'm here now and that's what counts.

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​So, what inspired me to pick up my pen? I visited a small town in Nannup, Western Australia, and was utterly charmed. It had everything a small town should have — flower boxes lining the streets, homely cafés, a one-hundred-year-old pub, an abandoned bakery rumoured to be haunted. I immediately started imagining characters walking the streets — a painfully shy, introverted woman arrives in town, wanting nothing more than a place to belong, and the gorgeous farmer with tanned forearms (of course!) who is instrumental in making her dream come true. I had a vision for this story, only trouble was, I had no idea how to make it come to life.

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Cue the next ten years of intense self-directed study. I read countless articles and books on the craft of writing, attended workshop and conferences, enrolled in courses, entered competitions and devoured judges' feedback. I attempted to write the manuscript three times, but each iteration just wasn't living up to vision I had for it, the story that I knew was in my heart. I put it aside and wrote other things — short stories, a novella, other manuscripts. I even smashed out the first draft of one story (60k words) in nineteen days! But nothing spoke to me as profoundly as my Nannup-inspired story.

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I went on to commission manuscripts for a UK-based publisher and worked with the authors I signed to develop their stories and bring them to a publishable standard. I learned how to combine all the elements of storytelling I'd studied over the years to produce a story with depth and meaning. A story with heart. And I used this knowledge to finally bring my vision to life. This story, percolating in my mind for a decade, became Home to the Heart Country, my debut novel, published by HarperCollins HQ and named one of 2025's most anticipated books by Apple Books and the AU Review.

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Thanks for reading,

Libby