There are places I’ve never been… and yet, I’ve still experienced them.
A line from the Beatles song, In My Life, has stayed with me over the years. It’s about the places we remember and the way they shape us.
I’ve realized some of those places, for me, are ones I’ve never actually been. Australia is one.
When I was 19, I moved into my first tiny apartment. It wasn’t anything special, but it felt like freedom. And one of my neighbors was from Australia.
In the evenings, a few of us would gather around the pool after work. Nothing planned. Just people unwinding at the end of the day. And she would talk.
About home and the land. About things that felt both distant and familiar at the same time.
I remember being drawn in, not just by her accent (though I loved that), but by the way she described it.
Over the years, that pull didn’t fade. It grew, thanks to books and movies, and by watching Steve Irwin on The Crocodile Hunter. His version of Australia felt alive and unpredictable and completely unlike anything I knew… but wanted to experience.
When I wrote Nothing to Lose, the final book in the Kayla Walsh trilogy, I went deep into research. Thankfully, two Australians made sure I didn’t get anything too far wrong.
There’s something powerful about writing a character who is trying to find her footing again.
Kayla’s journey began in confusion and loss, waking up to a life she didn’t recognize, trying to understand who she was and what had been taken from her. By the time she reaches the third book, she’s no longer just searching for answers.
She’s choosing where to go next.
And that meant stepping into the unknown.
The setting of Broome, Australia, goes back to a trip I took years ago to Somalia. I saw the Indian Ocean for the first time there, an endless blue stretch that drew me in, much like the Pacific I grew up with in Southern California.
It left an impression I didn’t expect.
When I learned about the camel trains along Broome’s Cable Beach, moving slowly across the Indian Ocean shoreline at sunset, I knew I wanted Kayla to experience that. Not just the beauty of it, but the stillness.
A moment where everything pauses and where she can breathe again, even if just for a little while.
Then she and her traveling companion set out for the Outback, a rugged place that doesn’t offer calm for long.
There are moments in this part of Kayla’s journey that are anything but peaceful—danger, uncertainty, and truths she can’t outrun. But even in the middle of that, something else is happening beneath the surface.
She’s becoming someone who can face what’s in front of her. Someone who can keep moving forward, even when the path isn’t clear.
I think that’s why I was drawn to writing this part of her story.
Not because of the setting, though I loved exploring it. But because of what it represents.
The idea that healing doesn’t always happen in familiar places. Sometimes it happens when you’re far outside of everything you know and while you’re still in motion.
I’ve never been to Australia. But in writing Kayla’s journey, I found pieces of it anyway.
That’s one of the gifts of storytelling.
Stories can take us somewhere new… and they can become places we carry with us, just like the ones we remember.
Thank you for being part of Kayla’s journey with me, through every stage of it.
Karen
P.S. What if the ending matters because of everything that came before it? Kayla and Martin’s journey leads her there. You can find Nothing to Lose here.
