Earlier this week I stood outside in our courtyard, balanced on a wooden bench, picking dead leaves from the vertical garden my husband and I installed just a few weeks ago. It’s been unseasonably warm in Sydney and the new plants are thriving – mostly; yet here and there curled shoots have fallen by the wayside, lost in the shock of their recent transplant. As I stood there with the sun warming my back and a hand full of crisp, brown leaves, my mind raced ahead to a vision of myself as an old lady stooped over a garden, pruning dead shoots and faded flowers. I have been asking myself in recent days how long this pain will last, but standing up there on the bench, I was struck by the sudden realisation that this pain isn’t going anywhere.

On 2nd July 2014 my world changed forever when my husband, Matt Richell, was killed in a surfing accident at Bronte beach. Matt was a brilliant light in our lives – a wonderful father, a son, a brother and my best friend and husband. The days following his death have been dark and difficult. The children and I are navigating a whole new terrain of grief and sadness. We miss him desperately.

Just beyond Clark Park in Sydney’s Lavender Bay, down a set of unmarked steps, and on past a tall white house with an intriguing turret room stands a little piece of heaven. I think it’s thanks to Frances Hodgson Burnett that I find it hard to resist the idea of a secret garden, and yet it’s taken me eight years of Sydney-living to make it to Wendy Whiteley’s beautiful creation.

March was a great month for me. I got lots of writing done, spent some time with my London-based agent over here in Sydney, then spent two weeks travelling around New Zealand’s south island with my family. Our days were filled with fresh air and mountains, lake-swimming and amazing wildlife, while the evenings were spent holed up in the campervan, drinking great NZ wine and reading books while the kids snored loudly in their bunks. A perfect holiday.

Here’s what made it onto my holiday reading list…

How is it already February? Wasn’t it just a few days ago we were eating Christmas leftovers and pulling down lights and decorations? Who pressed the fast forward button?

I’ve been slack at posting on my blog lately. Summer Down Under has been busy. I’m realising that on this side of the planet, everything comes at once: the end of the school year, Christmas, New Year, holidays, birthdays, road trips and visitors from the north seeking sunshine. It’s been fun but frenzied and so it is with a (small) sigh of relief that I eye my increasingly empty calendar and see the weeks stretching ahead where I can submerge myself once more in my unruly third novel.

One of the things I am asked most about is where my ideas come from. Over the course of the tour, my response to this question has become quite automated – I give a quick snapshot of of a place from my childhood that evoked powerful memories in me (Dorset) and talk about my own journey to motherhood, as well as my relocation to Australia … and how the three combined in some magical way to create the seed that grew my first novel, Secrets of the Tides. It’s become such a stock response for me that the other day I found myself wondering if it was even true …

I have just finished this novel by Graham Greene. It’s one my husband has been urging me to read ever since I met him. It’s taken me a few years, but I’m glad I got there. It’s a very beautiful, truthful story about a love affair, revisited two years after its tumultuous ending. I found it to be one of those books I wanted to dog ear pages and underline passages as I read …

I still don’t fully understand where the ideas and inspiration for a novel come from. As a writer, it’s something I’m often asked about, but the truth is that after the first flash of inspiration, it can feel as though I’m blindly following the thread of a fast-unravelling ball of string. I’m never quite sure where it’s going, or if it will lead me in circles or tangle me up in knots. I make notes. I plot. I think I know the ending, roughly. But there’s no getting away from the fact that it still feels like a massive act of faith leaping out into an idea.

Every rational bone in my body told me not to ditch the draft of the novel I ‘d been working on and pursue the thread of this new story. But, something about the idea was so exciting to me and it just wouldn’t leave me alone. Scenes kept expanding in my head to the point where after a week or so of soul-searching and a couple of frank but supportive chats with my agent and publisher, I decided to park what I’d been working on and pursue what would eventually become The Shadow Year.

I’m thrilled to say that Secrets of the Tides has been shortlisted for the Indies Debut Fiction Award. To be nominated for an award like this, voted for by the independent booksellers of Australia, really does feel like the best kind of encouragement and I’d like to thank all those booksellers who have taken the trouble to stock and sell my book over the past few months.

I’d heard a lot about ‘second novel syndrome’ before I sat down to attempt mine, although I’m not sure I was quite prepared for all that came with it … the crashing self-doubt, the weight of expectation, the deadline-induced panic. Don’t get me wrong; I love this new career and I feel incredibly lucky to be doing something that fills me with such joy – but in recent months my most frequent desk companions were nothing more than a mug of cooling coffee and a sneaky voice of self-doubt whispering in my ear: ‘You, a writer?’ followed by loud guffaws.

Today, I took myself off to the Francis Bacon – Five Decades exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. I’m in nail-biting limbo waiting for feedback from my Publisher on my second novel and so it was nice to break up the usual routine with a mooch around those big, white gallery rooms and gaze a while on some amazing paintings…

It’s paperback publication day in the UK and I’m utterly thrilled and completely gobsmacked that Secrets of the Tides has been selected for the autumn 2012 Richard & Judy Book Club. I found out just a few weeks ago and have been smiling and pinching myself ever since.

I’ve been getting horribly tangled up in the structure of my second novel. The story is relatively clear in my head – in the linear world I know the essence of what happens and when – it’s just piecing it all together in a compelling and lucid way that has me chewing my nails and scratching my head. Who do we want to hear the story from? When can they reveal their side of the story? Is this idea even working? Does anyone even care?

Living on the other side of the world definitely has it’s low points and not being at the burial of my Grandmother’s ashes in Dorset today is one of them.

My sister texted me earlier. She’s in the car on the motorway, heading to the cemetery now. My Dad is driving. My lanky brother probably lounging on the back seat, choosing the music. It’s pissing it down, apparently. I texted back and asked her to throw a pebble into the sea, drink a Coke from the bottle with a straw and find a cow pat to stand in – for me. I know they’ll be playing the same game our parents used to distract us on the long journey down there as kids: first person to see the sea …

‘I was once asked: “How do you know you are living?” and I said, “I create, so I know I am living.”‘

When I think of Sydney I think of sunshine and blue skies, palm trees and parakeets, and the harbour dazzling with outlandish beauty. All the usual clichés.

But what’s easy to forget is the rain: full days of relentless, never-ending downpour. You wake up in the night and hear it drumming on the roof and it’s still going full pelt the following afternoon.