Back in the 1990s, she was Susan Mikschi when she lived on Scone Road with her then husband, Klaus and daughters, Jasmine and Emily.

"My now ex-husband and I built Hookes Creek Forest Resort which we opened in 1993," Susan recalled.

Their children attended Barrington Public School in the late '90s, with the family relocating into Barrington after selling the business in 1998.

"They have very fond memories of Barrington school and Emily, in particular, would like her own daughter to attend a small country school."

After moving into town, they continued with a range of business ventures, building The Great Escape Lofts, opening Escape Cafe on Church Street and establishing a tourism magazine called Escape Magazine. They eventually moved out of the region and Susan now lives in Queensland.

But her childhood dream of writing a novel and becoming an author of Australian fiction remained. Finally in 2018, an idea for a story set in the region she used to call home began to form.

"I really started writing in earnest in 2019," Susan said. "I work full time, so was only writing on the weekend."

She spent three months completing a novella-sized first draft which she passed off to a few beta readers - avid readers who provide feedback on manuscripts prior to self-publishing. Having a publishing background, she decided to start her own imprint and published her book through Amazon.

"Designing the cover was fun," she said. "I asked a local artist in Warwick to paint a watercolour to suit my story, then developed the full cover myself. I spent hours looking at covers of books in bookstores to study the styles that fit my genre, what caught my attention, what was selling well."

As she's a first-time indie author there was a bit of trial and error, but it seems to have paid off with the book making traction in its sales.

According to Susan, the book is selling well in Australia and overseas, so much so that she's already writing the second book in what she's calling the Barrington series.

Charlie's Will is set around the fictional Barrington Homestead and is a fictional rural romance about rediscovering friendships and a young woman's fight to claim her birthright.

"Gloucester really felt like home to me and I recall many wonderful times with friends, not to mention some unforgettable characters, many of them larger than life," Susan said. "The area resonates with me. My girls and I speak of our time there quite often and I have slipped back for a few visits over the last 15 years or so to catch up with old friends and just enjoy the atmosphere."

Susan hopes to launch the second book in the series in Gloucester or Barrington later this year.