I’ve always been fascinated by wild Australian land and, when younger, my favourite memories are of camping in the bush and exploring the overgrown creek at the back of our first Melbourne house. Suddenly I was in a new country I didn’t fully understand a place that was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Thankfully, I’ve never been kidnapped, but when I was nine years old and moving from Wales to Australia, it felt like a bit of a kidnapping.

My first published book, Stolen, was very much influenced by my life and the things I did. Over the time spent with her captor, Gemma’s appreciation of him develops …but is this real love, or Stockholm Syndrome? My Influence She begins to feel something for her kidnapper when he wakes screaming in the night. The mysteries of Ty, and the mystery of her new life, start to take hold. Over time, Gemma comes to see Ty in a new light, a light in which he is something more sensitive. He has been watching and learning about Gemma for many years when he kidnaps her, his plan finally begins to take shape. In outback Australia he sees an opportunity for a new kind of life a life more connected to the earth. Unlike Gemma, however, he has had enough. But he too has been living in the city Gemma’s city. His childhood experience of living in outback Australia has forever changed the way he sees things. Ty, a young man, has other ideas for her.

Gemma must learn to deal with her predicament, or die trying to fight it. To her city-eyes, the landscape of the Australian outback is harsh and unforgiving with no other signs of human life for hundreds of kilometres. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back? In a moving letter to her captor, 16-year-old Gemma relives her kidnapping. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype – he’s young and attractive. Sixteen year old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback.

Stolen by lucy christopher