This is a book about Alicia, a perfectly normal married mother of three, who wakes one day to find a stranger in her bed. She is horrified to slowly realise that there are in fact two strangers, and one of them is her! Alicia has lost her memory, she has no recollection of her husband, her children or her life.

Alicia must embark on the most important journey of her life as she tries to recover her memory and her identity. She is thrilled, grateful and full of joy when as suddenly as it left, her memory returns. Everybody is thrilled, her husband, children, parents, even her uncle. After the initial euphoria Alicia realises that there is a day missing –  but really, what is one day when she has her life back?

One day can be a pivotal day in your life, as Alicia understands when she recovers the memory of that day, and repressed memories that turn her life and her relationships upside down.

What genre is this book?
This is a contemporary women’s fiction novel, with a good dash of romance.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
It will appeal to readers who appreciate a slow burn, a good story and well formed characters. It has a good dose of romance, friendship and the sometimes minefield of family relationships.

Complete this sentence for us: if you like _________________, you’ll love Blank Canvas.
If you like Jane Green, fiction with character and a story to tell, you’ll love my book.

Let’s return to Alicia for a moment. Tell us about her.
Alicia Russell considers herself to be a perfectly normal person. She discovers as she makes the journey as an on-looker to her life that she is not normal at all, and probably nobody really is. Alicia is given a unique viewpoint of herself as others see her and discovers a woman who is both smarter, stronger, and more repressed than she knew. When she recovers her memory she resolves to apply what she has learned about herself so that she can live her life more fully. It also helps her to deal with the fallout from the discovery she makes about herself when her repressed memories surface.

We’re getting really excited at the thought of reading this book; how do you expect us, and other readers, to feel when we finish it?
I would love readers to feel that they will miss the characters and the world that I created. I would love them to want more of Alicia and her friends and look forward to seeing other books of mine as they are published.

Have you published anything else?
This was my first book, however I am writing a series of four books that are set in the same town as Alicia’s world. Alicia will appear in each, or her family will, but the new books are featuring brand new characters.

I am concurrently writing a paranormal series which I am very excited about, which is populated by werewolves, witches and vampires.

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I am a writer living in North Queensland Australia. I currently share my home with my youngest son, two cats and a labrador. I have always loved to read and write, there is always a script running in my mind’s eye!

Do you have a website where we can keep up with your work?
I have a blog site: http://sherylmlee.blogspot.com.au/  where I write about my life, my writing journey, and anything else that comes into my mind.

How can we follow you on Twitter and/or Facebook?
I have a facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/sherylsmithwick which is a public page where I share pictures I like and links to my blog each time I write a new post.

What’s next?
Next is finishing the first in my series of 4 books set in Alicia’s home town, and which is a book about Facebook and how it is changing interpersonal relationships. It’s a light funny romance novel.

Also coming is the first in the series of Werewolf Tracker books, which I am loving writing. There’s something both empowering and freeing about making up your own world with your own rules and parameters.