Lady Alone follows an inexperienced New Zealander who must sail a damaged boat across the Pacific after her captain vanishes, learning to trust her own judgment as each mistake raises the stakes. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Writing a survival at sea tale had been on my radar for a number of years. What I needed was a “more than your average” premise. That came, in part, when I heard a tale of a woman who, like Joan, my main character, found herself alone on the high seas. That provided the action and drama at sea but failed to answer a critical question. What would drive a less-than-adventurous woman to abandon the familiar for an extreme unknown? Was she a full-blown lunatic or was there believable motivation, a desperate, emotional need to force change in her stalled life? Enter her mother and ex-boyfriend.

Which of Yao’s early sailing lessons became most important to Joan’s survival, and how did you decide when to introduce them?

Of Yao’s three lessons; general control of the boat proved the most important. No knowledge of when Yao had been lost overboard and only a rough guess of Atmosphere’s coordinates after four days of a failed search and out-of-commission engine, had increased the margin of error to a conjecture. Keeping the boat afloat and herself alive were her only hope of rallying help, if indeed Yao could still be alive.

What did you want the battered Atmosphere to represent as Joan’s relationship with the boat changed during the voyage? 

A single line in the story sums up Joan’s changing relationship with the boat: She wondered if Atmosphere was her chariot or her coffin. 

How did you develop the later police investigation, and what new pressure did you want it to place on Joan? 

Ending the tale with her rescue from a deserted island seemed too abrupt. Questions would be raised by authorities on the main island about the lost captain which allowed me to put Joan through a rinse-spin cycle of suspicions and for Joan and the reader, revelations that add more scope to Joan’s personal growth, Yao’s past and the convoluted history of a boat named, Atmosphere.

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