Jenny Bond's husband was so sick of her nagging him to write a book that he issued a challenge for her to write one herself. ''Chris has written the first two chapters of about 15 novels and he's never got further than that,'' Bond says with a laugh.
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''We've been married for 17 years and for 17 years I've been nagging him to just finish one.''
Bond and her husband, Chris Sheedy, run The Hard Word, a professional writing and media business, and Bond has previously worked as a teacher. When Sheedy told her to stop nagging and start writing herself, it got Bond thinking about the past 12 years of her career.
''I'd read so much, edited other people's work, I was analysing literature and I thought maybe I could write a book. Once I had the idea, I found it wasn't as daunting as Chris had made it out to be.''
The idea came from a New Yorker article she read about an ill-fated hot air balloon expedition to the North Pole in 1897. Three Swedish scientists, S.A. Andree, Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel, set off for the polar wilderness but never returned.
Little was known about their fate until 1930, when the bodies of two men and remnants of the explorers' final camp were discovered on a small ice-bound island in the Arctic Ocean.
A few weeks later, a journalist, Knut Stubbendorff, was sent on assignment to cover the story and he discovered the third body, as well as the scientific logs and personal journals of the adventurers.
''I was reading the article about this balloon expedition and I thought, 'Wow, that's a crazy plan','' Bond says. ''I thought it might be a good starting point for a novel and when I researched it more fully, I realised it wasn't so much the expedition, while that in itself was an amazing idea - it was the people around the expedition that I found even more fascinating.''
Bond's debut novel, Perfect North, has been described as ''strikingly original''. It's a book that is essentially a work of the imagination but one anchored in fact. It takes the expedition, draws out the characters, and presents a work that's both fascinating in its detail and intriguing in its storyline.
''I think I would have found writing pure fiction much more difficult, to be honest,'' Bond says. ''I kind of like that the story is based in reality and I could weave the story around that.''
Bond has taken some liberties. She created a relationship between Anna Charlier, the fiancee of Nils Strindberg, and his brother Erik to further draw out Charlier's breakdown. In real life, Charlier was never able to get over the loss of her lover and drifted in and out of mental institutions. She did eventually marry, but left instructions for her husband to have her heart's ashes buried next to Strindberg's grave, which he did.
The novel jumps between the expedition and the journalist Stubbendorff's quest to piece together the puzzle. It's a story of longing, and belonging, and secrets and shame.
The Strindberg family is still well known in Sweden. Nils' second cousin is the playwright August Strindberg and many people in the family are well-to-do artists.
Bond says it will be interesting if the novel is published in Scandinavia, but she is confident she has painted them in a good light.
The manuscript of her second novel is with publisher Hachette. The President's Lunch is also a work of historical fiction woven around the real-life administration of United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor.
''They're the most fascinating couple I've ever read about,'' Bond says.
She's now writing her third novel, which will be about pirates - specifically Sam Bellamy, otherwise known as Black Sam.
''He's not well known, but in terms of his treasure haul, he's the most successful pirate of all time, seeing he was only a pirate for a year.''
Bond came across the story while she and her seven-year-old son, Sam, were touring the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC. She was there researching The President's Lunch.
''Sam is mad about pirates, so he's very excited by the idea of a pirate book.''
Bond, 42, and Sheedy, who live in Tuggeranong, are also the parents of 14-month-old Ben and Bond manages to write on the three days he's in childcare.
''I write like a woman possessed on those days I can,'' she says, also managing to grab time if her husband takes the boys on an expedition of their own.
So, any hot air balloon expeditions in the pipeline?
''Sam is really keen, so I think we'll do it next year,'' Bond says.
When I suggest that if their balloon disappears, Sheedy might finally have the start for his first complete novel, Bond laughs and says: ''Now wouldn't that be a twist!''
** Perfect North, by Jenny Bond. (Hachette, $29.99.)