Under Northern Lights

Imagine sitting in a tiny cottage, snowbound in a winter where the sun never peeks over the horizon – and a book lets you escape into the sweltering heat of the great Aussie outback!

It’s a thought that makes me smile – because that book is going to be one of mine…

I’ve just been told that there is to be a Norwegian language edition of The Farmer Needs A Wife.

This is a special treat for me – as a couple of years ago webmaster John and I had the most fabulous holiday in Norway.

We went there in the dead of winter – on a cruise ship chasing the Northern Lights.

 We found them too.

It’s interesting that looking at them in the sky above me, they seemed white. It wasn’t until we looked at the photo that we saw the green.

We sailed around the top of Norway to North Cape – the northern most tip of Europe – and then across the top of the world toward the Russian Border.

I grew up in a pretty remote place – in the outback, it can be a long drive to your nearest neighbor – but at least you can drive, or ride a horse or a motorbike.

In Norway we saw tiny fishing villages clinging to the sides of the fjords and on small rocky islands, and they seemed to me to be far more isolated than the places I knew as a child. Or perhaps it was their unfamiliarity that made them seem so.

Whatever the reason, I felt a sort of kinship with the people living there – because I know what it feels like to be a long way from anywhere.

It makes me smile to look at these photos and think that one day there may well be people sitting in those snowbound houses, warming themselves with my tales of Peter and Donna in the outback and of Matt and Helen riding horses along a slow-moving river. They can join Molly and Greg on the beach, or Leigh and Simon as they stroll through the sunlit vineyards.

My love of wild places has probably grown from my childhood – but I’m never going to be able to visit every place in this wide world that I long to see. Those I can’t visit in the flesh, I can visit in books. And maybe my books help others do the same.