My novel started out as a a book about cruising. Having done more than 200 press trips as a cruise writer, been just about everywhere, and enjoyed every minute of it, I thought I would do the selfless thing and pass on my enthusiasm. To men for a start — you see, women are the great cruise lovers. They want to see the world, and enjoy the good weather that usually comes with cruising, while they can. I maintain that women get more adventurous as they grow older, whereas men just get older.
Then I met a woman. Well, not quite, I was with other cruise writers on a ship and we saw this strikingly attractive woman in a picture hat. “Who’s that girl on the gangway?’ said a colleague.
We later learned that she was the wife of an American pilot shot down over Vietnam. He was MIA – missing in action. She was a woman with her life on hold.
When it came to writing my book, she had to be in it, and it is dedicated to that woman, and how I would have liked her journey to end.
