The markets in Alor, Indonesia where it all went down. (Check out the chicken at the bottom of the frame lining me up for a fight)

WHERE DID DAHLIA COME FROM?

I love getting asked this question because the story is so out there.

In 2018 I was on a charity mission to East Timor. A few nights after we arrived, I woke at 1 am and couldn’t switch my mind back off. I decided a midnight mission through the markets outside our compound was in order.

The smell of fresh fish and frying bread hung in the air. Locals haggled over produce and spat wads of beetle nut at their feet. Others shouted in Bahasa, a siren rang, a rooster sang its song proudly. I got burnt by bubbling oil and slipped on entrails. The bustle was so intoxicating that I just had to venture deeper into the unknown.

After buying some coffee flavoured sludge from a rickety stall, I noticed I was being watched by an eccentrically dressed woman in her forties. Her hair was wrapped in a black headscarf, her eyes were dark, she was heavily jewelled and had a different cut of face to the locals. Being the only white person in the markets, I was an outcast. And in her, I’d found a friend.

I was summoned with a curling finger and was too scared to refuse. Her stall was no bigger than my pantry and was hidden behind a blackout curtain. Was this the start of an unwilling organ extraction? Was I about to get jumped for the wad of Rupiah in my pocket?

We sat around a table no bigger than a pizza tray and after chanting a blessing, she gave me a beaded necklace and held it in my hand. ‘Shirt off,’ she said in the only English she spoke during our interaction. I obeyed because I was under her spell. We sat and stared at each other. She mumbled as she gazed into my eyes, squeezed my shoulders, read my palm and pulled a random tarot card.

Then, without warning or explanation, she disappeared out the back of her ‘office’ to never return. I freaked out and made my escape a minute later. But the magic remained.

Later that day, as I was laying bricks and sipping coconut water from the source, I started building the story that would become Dahlia – The Velvet Witch and Her Dark Spirit. The pretty witch was my partner; her mystical energy spread to me. She had a dark side which I discovered was because her soul belonged to a demon. She was mentally ill from years of suffering, but she was brave and kept fighting.

I was so captivated I did something I hadn’t done in fifteen years and put pen to paper. I had 5,000 words when I landed back in Perth. A year later, I had 128,000 words. After another year of editing, I’d sharpened it to 87,000 words and uploaded the finished manuscript to Amazon, IngramSpark and the audiobook to Findaway Voices.

Today, I’m writing the next story in the series. Dahlia – The Forest.

Quite literally the first words of Dahlia being written on Alor Island, Indonesia.