1 When I was growing up in Tasmania I had dreams of dancing in Swan Lake, of singing like Doris Day, or becoming the darling of Hollywood like Elizabeth Taylor. With a name like Tamara McKinley, how could I fail? Never in my wildest imagination - and it was pretty wild - did it occur to me that one day I would be a best-selling author. But the clues were all there in the games and plays I invented and in the books I read.
Tamara McKinley by Joanna Crittenden
2 I graduated from Squirrel Nutkin to Milly Molly Mandy and then on to The Famous Five and tales of adventures in English boarding schools. My grandmother and great-aunts who raised me were determined I should learn to love the written word - and they succeeded.
3 I got a rude awakening when I was sent to a girl's boarding school in England. There were no adventures, no midnight feasts and not even any hockey! In fact it had little bearing on those childhood stories, and because I spoke with a broad Tasmanian accent and had no understanding of the strange rules and regulations laid down by the elderly spinster headmistress, my time at boarding school proved to be a miserable experience. My one achievement was to prove I could write a good story and by the time I left the school, I'd read every book in the library.
4 I was twelve or thirteen when I read Exodus by Leon Uris, and its effect on me was electric. I was overwhelmed by the sheer power of the story and how it made me feel and think - and I yearned to be able to tell such a tale and have the same effect on others.
5 The naivety and arrogance of youth is a wondrous thing and I plunged blindly into what was going to be the greatest novel ever written. Needless to say the task was beyond me, so I put away the childish fantasy and concentrated on boring exams, the swinging sixties and boys with motorbikes.
6 Over the next few years there were glimmers of that fantasy dream which emerged after I'd been disappointed in a book, or found the storyline unsatisfactory, or the ending totally frustrating. That little voice was whispering again that I could do better - but I firmly ignored it.
7 I got married and settled down to raise three children, reading them stories and telling them about my childhood in Tasmania and the strange relationship I had with my mother, grandmother and great aunts. Even then, I knew that such a story would make a great book - but I was too busy, and certainly didn't have the faith in my talent to do anything about it.
8 Two marriages later, the children had flown the nest, bailiffs were banging on my front door and I was forced to sleep on other people's couches. I finally listened to that little voice and wrote the family story. It wasn't ever going to win prizes, and even I could see it was a mess - but now I was hooked on story-telling - and more amazingly, I was absolutely convinced that this was what I was meant to do, and that I would succeed.
9 Success doesn't come easily. Writing is an art which has to be learned like any other skill, and so I suffered many rejections over the next five years. I discovered the healing power of throwing flower pots against a wall, and once I'd gained my equilibrium again, I persevered with the next novel. And then I wrote Matilda's Last Waltz and it changed my life. My books are consistently in the top best-selling lists all over the world, and Echoes From Afar is my thirteenth novel.
10 If you want to know more about me, and my alter-ego Ellie Dean, please go to my websites:- www.tamaramckinley.co.uk or www.ellie-dean.co.uk or check me out on Facebook.
Echoes From Afar by Tamara McKinley is published by Quercus on 28th January 2016