St John’s-based author Rona Halsall sees her new book, Keep You Safe, coming out next week.

Described on the Amazon Kindle store as ’a totally gripping psychological thriller - perfect for fans of Big Little Lies and The Girl on the Train’, it tells the story of Natalie who is desperate to find her little boy.

It has been more than three years since she saw Harry.

Three long years she spent in prison for a crime she knows she didn’t commit.

But her husband believed the police, and took their son.

Who has gone to such great lengths to destroy Natalie’s life?

Everyone she once trusted - friends, family, everyone close to her - what secrets do they hide?

If Natalie finds the truth, will she get Harry back, or lose him forever?

Rona explained that a trip on the Steam Packet provided the inspiration for the story: ’I’m not from the island but my husband David is and we spend a lot of time going backwards and forwards from the Isle of Man.

’My story started when I was sitting on a ferry thinking that it would be quite a nice starting point for a book.’

After she wrote it, she added, the original story changed signifcantly before publication: ’It went through several incarnations, due to unput from various editors.

’I wrote it first as a romantic mystery and then I sent it to an agent and she said: "I can’t take you on with this story as it is but I think your writing voice would suit psychological thrillers" and I thought: "I’ll never be able to write a psychological thriller with all that plotting but I’ll give it a go" and between us we tweaked it and got the plot sorted out.’

Rona went on: ’She helped me a lot but it wasn’t really her genre so she felt that she wasn’t the right agent for me.

’So when I’d finished it I sent it out to another five agents and one of them got back to me on the same day and said: "We really like this: can you send us the full manuscript" and it just snowballed from there and they loved it.

’They knew straight away which publisher they wanted for me.

’When I went to London to meet them they said they thought Bookouture would be the ideal publisher for me and they were really enthusiastic about it - it was amazing having that enthusiasm and they have been wonderful to work with.’

As with many books nowadays Keep You Safe is currently available in digital format only but it has been published by Bookouture who were taken over last year by Hachette.

’What it means now as an author is that if you sell well on the ebooks then there’s the opportunity for you to get published in paperback as well,’ said Rona.

Keep You Safe by Rona Halsall is out on August 17.

It is available for pre-order in the Amazon Kindle Store.

by Julie Blackburn

Twitter:@iomnewspapers