I am excited this week to present a guest post by Australian Author Jan Selbourne. Jan writes about her path to become an author and the true-life inspirations for her novels. Jan is a wonderful author, and I can’t wait to read her newest book, The Woman Behind the Mirror.

Thank you, Jan for this post, and I will step out of the way and let you tell your fascinating story.

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Hello Robin, thank you very much for having me as your guest.

I’m Jan Selbourne, author or four historical fiction books and the Aussie half of Nomad Author’s Aussie to Yank newsletter.

I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and thank my parents for my love of books. As a child I suffered from severe asthma and when confined to bed my mother made sure I had books for company. School introduced me to more books and being part of the Commonwealth (the 54 member states that were former territories of the British Empire) we learned British and European history. I was hopeless at maths, so I guess that’s where the urge to write began. A year at business college put me into an accounting career and when I was 21, I joined the tide of Australians travelling to the United Kingdom for a working holiday. In front of me was the history I’d read about. I was hooked. However, career and marriage and children kept the urge to write firmly on the backburner. ‘When I retire’, I said to myself. Then a change of direction to a large historical society in northern New South Wales as committee secretary. This society’s archives hold the history of that region from first European settlement. Life for early settlers in colonial Australia was not easy and their stories are awe inspiring. When I finally retired it was My Time to Write – and I had no idea what to write about.

Inspiration came from an article on how people react when faced with extreme danger and my grandfather’s WW1 military service records.  In Behind the Clouds, Adrian and Gabrielle Bryce, who can barely tolerate each other, are trapped in Belgium as the clouds of war loom over Europe. Plunged into a nightmare of lies and betrayal, they flee for their lives as the German forces cross the border. Narrowly avoiding capture, witnessing death and atrocities, they reach safety as two different people – to face charges of treason and a woman who’ll stop at nothing to see Adrian dead. Behind the Clouds was later renamed Perilous Love.

A throwaway comment “at any age a lot of change happens to us in ten years” gave me the idea for Lies of Gold.  A love affair ends in anger, Katherine is left with the consequences; hard living and war has numbed Julian. Ten years later fate steps in. Gold is crossing the Channel to Napoleon Bonaparte and Julian’s orders to find the traitor bring him back to Halton Hall and Katherine – and the man of many faces whose gold smuggling covers something much more sinister.  I was thrilled and honoured Lies of Gold was awarded the 2019 Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Silver Medal – Historical Romance category.

In 2014 I visited the Western Front where my grandfather served during WW1. Thousands of graves of young men who never came home. So many of those graves inscribed “Known Only to God”. ID tags missing or their bodies unrecognisable. In those days war service records were handwritten with a service number, name, date of birth, nationality, marital status, religion recorded on the first page. I wondered if a soldier could steal the identity of a fallen comrade. I was told it was possible but the chance of discovery very real and the penalties very harsh. That was good enough for me to write The Proposition. One man enlists to avoid arrest, the other to avoid the money lenders. In the thick of battle, one is wounded and collapses beside the body of the other. It’s a risk, a hanging offence, his only chance of a new life. Harry swaps identity discs. Now Andrew Conroy, he’s plunged into a nightmare of deception and murder.

In 2018 I met Dee S. Knight – believe it or not – over a book. Dee had reviewed Perilous Love, – I wrote to thank her and we clicked.  Despite Dee living in Idaho, me Down Under New South Wales and writing in different genres, we share a lot of the same values and a good sense of humour.  A good sense of humour is a must in the publishing world! Dee has written many wonderful books (spicy hot books I might add) and she’s been super supportive to me, a virtual newcomer.  In 2018 we began our Aussie to Yank newsletter and it’s a lot of fun. Not only do we write about what’s going on in our respective parts of the world, we’ve interviewed wonderful authors from Canada, across the U.S from Alaska to the east coast, Britain and a couple of Aussies thrown in for good measure.  As I wrote in our last newsletter it still amazes me how unique each story is. There is indeed a book for every reader.

Dee and her husband Jack have recently established Nomad Authors Publishing and they offered to publish my just completed 4^th book, The Woman Behind the Mirror. I am grateful to Dee for her encouragement and help during the final editing and I’m very excited about this new venture. Here’s a little bit about The Woman Behind the Mirror.

Betrothed by her father to a man twice her age, Sarah Forsythe does the unthinkable—she runs away with the son of a Methodist minister. Not to Gretna Green, to colonial America—For Sarah, this “new world” brings broken promises, abandonment, poverty and shame. Around her, the American Revolution is seething, and the siege of Boston worsens by the day. As British soldiers seek out traitors and treason, a desperate Sarah breaks open a safe looking for cash. Instead, she finds a box holding Bank of England documents. Through willpower, bitter determination, and lying through her teeth, Sarah manages to make her way home to England. What she doesn’t know is that two men follow, and they will do anything to claim those documents. Bank investigator Neil McAlister faces an almost impossible task—to determine the true owner of the documents by deciding who is lying. Most of all, as danger creeps ever closer, he needs to know who wants the secretive, beautiful Sarah dead.

Thank you again Robin and I’m looking forward to your next newsletter. Jan

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Thank you, Jan, and I can’t wait to read your books. Congratulations again on the 2019 Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Silver Medal for Lies of Gold. Here are a few links to Jan’s books and her social media accounts.

The Proposition

Lies of Gold

Facebook

LinkedIn

Nomad Authors

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Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.

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