We recently met up with the award-winning Rhode Island author, Elizabeth Devlin, a the renewed Maine Writers Retreat. During one of our chats, Elizabeth graciously agreed to visit the Wild Women blog. In another, she wanted to veer from our usual format and talk about how Home Waters came about.
So
. . . take it away Elizabeth Devlin. . .
When I first got the idea for my novel Home Waters, I was looking out at Narragansett Bay and wondering “what if something threatened to ruin these beautiful waters?” So immediately I began envisioning a romance with an environmental twist.
In typical fashion (I’m known to my friends as the “Research Queen”), my next step was to investigate what would constitute a realistic threat. Since I’m not a scientist, however, at first that proved daunting – WAY too many possibilities! Fortunately, one of the premier oceanographic centers in the world is the URI/GSO (Univ. of Rhode Island/Graduate School of Oceanography) which is located not far from where I live. I reached out to Prof. Steven D’Hondt and he agreed to talk over lunch at an on-campus café frequented by the GSO faculty. That’s when I got really lucky. After a few minutes of Steve and I brainstorming possible threats, other oceanographers at surrounding tables began to chime in. By the end of an hour, at least ten oceanographers were tossing out ideas, fast and furious. Our biggest challenge was finding a threat with a potential (even if problematic) solution.
What the oceanographers and I settled on was this: What if invasive toxic algae (I named it Black Tide) threatened to decimate the entire bay and its surrounding shoreline?
While that question suggests a dark suspense novel—and Home Waters contains some elements of that—at heart it’s a family story. It’s about reclusive oceanographer Becket Fallon trying to stop the toxic algae threat while simultaneously dealing with an urgent family crisis. He needs help from non-profit expert Lainey Carmichael, but she comes at a price. She’ll help get the funding critical to stopping Black Tide, but only if he lets her and 3-year-old twins stay with him for the summer. The twin granddaughters he’s felt duty-bound to avoid.
Home Waters explores the conflicting demands of work to save the bay’s future and a family who needs Becket now. While the characters drive the action, the Narragansett Bay setting permeates every aspect of the story. Anyone who loves the ocean will identify with the feeling the characters get as they live and work on the water.
Instead of telling readers why they should care about the environment, the novel puts readers into the minds and hearts of two people as they wrestle with how to prevent invasive toxic algae from overwhelming the bay. The simultaneous family drama keeps us grounded.
BayWatch, a Save-the-Bay-style organization, plays a key role in the story, but telling exactly how that happens would be a plot spoiler. Suffice is to say that enlisting their help forces the main characters to face some difficult choices. The real-life Save the Bay receives 25% of all royalties from the book, so here’s a way to have fun and do some good at the same time.
To purchase Home Waters, go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MHGWFCG
About Elizabeth
Devlin
Elizabeth grew up sailing the waters of Narragansett
Bay and never forgot it. After a doctorate from Oxford and years serving in
U.S. embassies around the world, she returned to R.I. to teach at the Naval War
College in Newport. She left that job to build a house with a view of the water
so she could fulfill her lifelong ambition to write stories focused on what fires
her passion. Home Waters is her sixth book, but the first she’s “let out
into the world.” It was a finalist for two National Excellence in Romance
Fiction awards (best mainstream and best first book).
To learn more, go to:
Website: https://elizabethdevlin.com/
Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/Elizabeth.Devlin.writer
Facebook Fan
Page: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethDevlinAuthor/
TV Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldrfiXL7wI4
Video
interview: CItywide Blackout
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waterviewstories/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55845483-home-waters
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/home-waters-by-elizabeth-devlin
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