“Where did you get the idea for your book?” It’s a question authors are asked all the time. Sometimes the conception is so vague and evolutionary that it is difficult to put into words, even for a writer. However, in the case of my new novel, Bury Your Horses, there really was a single, seminal “a-ha” moment. The book’s spark came while I was working on a project for the Hockey Hall of Fame researching North American hockey.

For about 12 years now, the majority of my days have been spent sitting at my writing desk, creating sentences, hemmed in by a fortress of books on sailing ships & shipwrecks, the British Royal Navy and the naval War of 1812, listening to the movie scores of Master & Commander and Pride & Prejudice (among others) that transport me back in time to a world that has long since passed away, and help me to imagine lives that were once played out on the high seas.