The idea for this story came from a variety of sources. It was 2010 and I'd been wanting to branch out from the smaller medical romances, which was a bit scary and made more difficult by a lack of ideas. I headed off on a ski-ing holiday to Mt Hotham and I got separated from friends and found myself going up the Heavenly Valley chairlife on my own. As I rode high in the Australian Alps, surrounded by pristine, white snow, I suddenly had an image of a bride holding a wedding cake and staring into a vacant shop window. I had no clue why a bride would be doing that but the image stuck with me. On the drive home, The Waifs came on singing, Bridal Train; the story of their grandmother who married a US sailor during WW2. At the end of the war, the US navy commissioned a train to collect all the war brides around the country and gathered them all in Sydney to set sail for the US.
But my book wasn't an historical! However, it got me thinking...what if you had grown up hearing the great romantic adventure-cum-love story of your grandmother, and what if your mother had her own great romantic adventure-cum-love story and both stories were family folk law. I suddenly had a reason for my heroine, Matilda, to be standing in an ancient wedding dress, holding a cake and staring into an empty shop window ready for her great adventure.
