Natalie Murray is a novelist who firmly believes in the formula of "write what you know".
So making Newcastle and the Hunter Valley the backdrop for her debut adult contemporary romance novel Love, Just In wasn't a hard decision.
The book, her first major contract with publishing giant Allen and Unwin, was published this month.
Murray is the daughter of Les Murray, who was a legendary football sportscaster at SBS, and Eva Stovern, a noted cookbook author. After living in Hong Kong for a decade with her husband, the couple and their two children relocated to Kilaben Bay on the western shore of Lake Macquarie.
Murray, raised in Sydney, made the decision to move here because she wanted to be close to family after 10 years of living overseas.
"I was apprehensive about it," she says.
"I had hardly spent any time here before. It completely won me over within the first year. I fell head over heels for the city [Newcastle] and all it has to offer, and the proximity to the Hunter Valley and Sydney. I just feel it has everything without the traffic and the noise."
Her romance novel follows the journey of Josie Larsen, a young journalist who has just taken a six-month transfer from a Sydney TV newsroom to NRN TV station in Newcastle. The move sees her reignite a friendship with Zac Jameson, now working as a paramedic and living in a pretty little house in Hamilton.
While dealing with her own severe case of health anxiety, Josie is also trying to come to grips with her relationship with Zac.
But, of course, through 105,000 words and 452 pages, we know how this is going to end.
"I'm a die-hard romantic, always have been," Murray says.
"My favourite films, my favourite books, have always revolved around romance.
"When I'm writing in that space, it's always a happy and hopeful space. The key promise we make to our readers is a happy ending. That is an unbreakable promise for a romance author, so even though I can take my characters to dark places - which I do, because that is what life is like - I always end on an optimistic note. I always know the ending."
The Newcastle setting works a treat. There's a day of action at the Newcastle show, a failed rental arrangement in a Cooks Hill terrace, a trip to a fancy wedding in the Hunter Valley and a house fire in Mayfield. The NRN newsroom is on the third floor of a building in Honeysuckle.
Murray gives thanks to NBN journalist Jane Goldsmith in the acknowledgements. "I interviewed her for the book," Murray says. "She's a lovely, generous, warm person."
No characters in the book are based on real people, Murray says, although some characters may be inspired by people she has met. Her husband is probably the exception, she admits.
"He knows that some of his direct quotes have made it into my books," she says.
"I have to credit him with some of the comedic moments. I'm married to an exceptional man."
The severe health anxiety suffered by the main character, Josie Larsen, is based on Murray's own experience.
"I am somebody who has lived with quite severe health anxiety for probably about seven years now," she says.
Murray says the mental illness was probably triggered by having children.
"I was living in Hong Kong at the time. I lived there for 10 years and both my children were born there," she says.
"I had never experienced health anxiety before I had children, even though I had a number of tests for potentially serious illnesses in my younger years, not very often, but I had been in the situation before and handled it fine.
"But after I had children I developed this irrational phobia of dying and leaving them behind. And my doctor at the time did diagnose it as a form of post natal depression, even though it wasn't classic post natal depression and I wasn't so much depressed as highly anxious.
"And every strange body symptom, every lump that I wasn't sure was there before, everything suddenly pointed in my mind to a life-threatening illness.
"There were a number of occasions, in the worst phase of it, where I genuinely 100 per cent believed I was going to die. At the same time I was trying to parent two very young children, believing that my days with them were numbered and they would be left without a mother.
"So I did what Josie does in Love, Just In and I sought help and received counselling and was put on medication for a while and learned strategies to bring it under control."
The early feedback from readers has been both "wonderful and heart-breaking", with messages from people with health anxiety or general anxiety who have resonated with Josie's experiences in the book.
"The panic attacks that Josie experiences are carbon copies of some of my own panic attacks, and my catastrophic thought spirals," Murray says.
"But I learnt it is a condition that's treatable."
She hopes readers can be inspired to seek help if it's an issue in their lives.
