Love with a Chance of Drowning
Kirkus Reviews summed up Love with a chance of Drowning nicely: “A funny, irresistibly offbeat tale about the risks and rewards of living, and loving, with an open heart.”
The story began in my mid-twenties, when I met an Argentinean man in a cocktail bar who turned out to be an adventurer with an ambitious dream to explore the world aboard his timeworn but seaworthy sailboat Gracie. Given that I was a city girl with a debilitating fear of deep water (and chronic seasickness to boot), the two of us were an almost comically ill-suited match, but that didn’t stop us from falling madly in love. Lovesick and longing for adventure, I decided to face my fears and join him on a two-year journey across the Pacific. The adventure that followed was breathtaking, terrifying, and eventually heartbreaking when I discovered mid-Pacific that I was trapped in a ménage trois with my Latin lover and his sailboat.
You write about your travels and misadventures on your blog, so tell us about the early stages of this.
When I first set off travelling by sea, I kept a small blog to essentially let my loved ones know I wasn’t dead. Since I’d decided to travel across the world’s biggest ocean on a leaky boat with a man they’d never met, I figured that keeping in touch with the occasional amusing story was the least I could do to offer comfort.
Through that blog, I found my voice as a writer, learning how to lose myself in a world of words and make light of the often-hairy situations we found ourselves in, like accidently shooting an islander with a spear gun, or finding ourselves aboard, days from land, rapidly taking on seawater from a mysterious hole in the boat. It relieved a lot of tension to turn those otherwise-traumatic situations into lighthearted stories. That blog became the foundation for my book.
I have since retired that blog to begin a new one, called FearfulAdventurer.com. This one addresses a much broader range of topics than the original blog, covering everything from naysayers, geckos and open letters addressed to strangers in helmets.
At what point did you decide to travel across the Pacific?
True to my style of indecision and procrastination, I made that decision on a whim at the eleventh hour. On the morning we were due to leave the American continent to sail twenty-six days through open ocean towards French Polynesia, I was teetering between staying and going. The only sailing I’d done prior to that was a hellish voyage down the Californian coast, which was dominated by mayhem, vomit, and the firm belief that I was going to die an extremely horrible death. Twenty-six days is a long time to hang in there under these circumstances, and so I left the big decision until the very last moment, while my fear of regret wrestled with my fear of the ocean. In the end, Jaws was slightly less scary than the thought of being an old, bitter, and regretful woman, so I went.
When did your fear of water begin?
It’s hard to say, exactly, but I would guess the fear began somewhere between the 49th or 50th repeat viewing of Spielberg’s Jaws. My dad is a horror movie writer, so the dark side was something of religion in my household. While other families were gathered around the dinner table talking about school, career choices, and friendships, my family assembled to talk about ghosts, monsters, and other ways to get the crap scared out of you. We loved it. But the by-product of this early exposure to the macabre is a residual truckload of fears. The ocean is just one of them.
Of all the places you visited where was your favourite?
Toau. It’s an atoll tucked away in the Tuamotus Archipelago—north of Tahiti, South of Hawaii—that looks like Photoshop-enhanced paradise porn. It had a cosy, well-protected lagoon for us to anchor the boat in, and the family ashore welcomed us like adopted children. They took us fishing, snorkeling, and exploring, and they were forgiving and good-humoured when Ivan accidentally shot one of them in the hand with a spear gun.
How important is it for you to keep in touch with your readers?
Unless you’re Stephen King or Nora Roberts, I think it’s the expected standard these days. It can be difficult to keep up with all sixteen (!) channels through which I can be contacted, but it’s really wonderful to receive so many messages from people who have been moved to tears, inspired by, or kept awake all night by my book.
The book has received so many lovely reports from readers so which one has stuck with you the most?
I recently read a review from a 60-year old man who said Love with a Chance of Drowning inspired him to go on an extreme RIB boat ride despite the fact that he was terrified. I thought that was gorgeous.
Another woman wrote to ask if she could have a poster of my book cover to go in her new house. She loved the read, especially because it reminded her of her own exotic travels with her husband, and so she wanted a reminder of it hanging on her wall. I’m not sure a writer can receive a better compliment than that.
This is your first book and people have praised you for your natural storytelling, so where did this talent emerge from?
My dad is a scriptwriter, and given that entertainment put dinner on the table and clothes on our backs, my sisters and I were allowed to consume as much film and television as we so desired. It was all we did in our spare time. From that I absorbed a strong sense of storytelling, though I didn’t know it until I started editing my first draft with a savage red pen and an objective mind on was working and what was not.
A lot of your reviews have said how funny your writing is, so have you always been able to see the positive in things?
I’m actually quite the pessimist. I think most people who write self-deprecating humour employ comedy as a way to release tension over memories or experiences that were unpleasant and disturbing at the time that they occurred. We always have a choice over whether or not we want to remember the details of our lives with self-pity and regret, or acceptance and openness. “Life is too important to be taken seriously,” said Oscar Wilde, and I wholeheartedly agree. We can either develop resentments and fears over the past, or we can repurpose hardships as material for laughter, therapy, and human connection. On a daily basis, I make a deliberate effort to choose the latter option.
What is next for you?
Writing, travelling some more, reckless adventures, bad decisions, trying not to die… The usual.