It’s a strange feeling when you finally receive copies of your first novel from the publishers. It’s a mix of exhilaration – that the project you’ve been working on for the past four years has finally come to fruition – and sheer terror. Does your novel Elizabeth & Elizabeth really do justice to their amazing story? Will Elizabeth Macquarie and Elizabeth Macarthur dazzle on the page in the same way they hypnotised me? Will readers fall in love with them too? Well, it’s taken four years of research, drafts and redrafts, pain, tears and determination to get to this stage: sitting on the floor in my pyjamas having a quiet little cry over the freshly-minted copies of the book. Crazy, isn’t it? But I just couldn’t help it. And now I’ve got the anxious wait till its release on January 11 to fret. If only I had Elizabeth Macarthur’s fortitude or Elizabeth Macquarie’s grace …
