Romy Mercer

I write the heroine I wanted to be.

I trained as a journalist, and I have loved words for as long as I can remember. My husband and I live aboard our sailing boat in the Mediterranean, afloat for the sailing season, and in winter the boat sits on the hard in the south of France while the notebook comes ashore with me. I write after work until about midnight, with a glass of Franciacorta at my elbow and a notebook full of doodles, and right now I am writing you four books for one summer. I am telling you a year ahead because the women I write for plan their holidays properly. My face stays off these pages because it belongs to my other working life. The boat and the books are real, and so is the glass.

Where the books began

My whole childhood I wanted to be Lois Lane, and I studied journalism to get there. I became a reporter, and the longer I wrote about people building new projects, the more I wanted to be in there building with them, so I crossed over and took my words with me. These days they go into speeches and into the papers people read before they make big decisions on the evidence, and I still love hunting for the sentence that makes a room lean in.

Creative writing found me again in 2025, when I started a small audio podcast of stories, each one built around an object. My dear friends loved it and sent it to their friends, and somehow that turned into a writing residency in a library for the first months of 2026. That is where I found my writing coach, and where I listened to more writing podcasts than any sane person should.

That spring a dear friend came to stay aboard. We were having sunset drinks at anchor off the island at the edge of the bay on the Côte d’Azur, the castle going from stone to copper across the water and the ferry making its last crossing below it, and I just started telling her and my husband a story. She told me to write the stories I see, and my husband, who has known forever that I love writing, agreed before she had finished the sentence. A little embarrassed, I told my coach I had a stupid idea for a novel about a strong woman on a boat, the sort of book I would love my daughter to read. She jumped straight in and challenged me to write an outline and a terrible first draft. The draft was so terrible she called it unfixable and told me to start again. I poured a Franciacorta and started again, and I was hooked. The castle and the ferry are both in the first book, and if you look closely, so is my friend.

The boat

My husband and I got our licences after years of looking at the water, and in the end we decided to get properly good at it and live with the elements. Our families and friends are spread across every continent, and I love living between languages and cultures, with the Antipodes on one side of me and Europe on the other, so a boat makes a fine address. The sunrises and sunsets since we moved aboard are the most beautiful of my life, and I have stopped apologising for how often I say so.

Coming into a new harbour I am on the bow with the mooring line and he is at the helm, and we talk the whole way in on headphones. “Wow, did you see that wine bar above the private bay? We have to go there.” He calls me the diplomatic service, because I am smiling and chatting with the harbour boat before it has even come alongside. On night passages I laugh out loud at the ghost ships on the plotter that blink in and out, and I wonder what they are carrying when they switch their signals off.

He is also my first reader, long before there is a page to read. I tell him every plot out loud on deck, and he is a sceptic and a far more experienced sailor than I am, with a solid knowledge of the land as well, so he finds the holes in a story fast. That is a huge relief, because it leaves me free to fall for my characters, and I love every single one of them. He brings a drink to the chart table in the middle of a writing binge, and he has forgiven more than one date night that I spent with a scene instead of with him.

The desk

I write at night, on the evenings I am home, under the one cabin lamp, with the halyards quiet and a glass of Franciacorta beside me, or a dark and stormy made with Australian ginger beer and a sailorly Caribbean rum. My notebook is a glorious mess of doodles and reminders, and I write in waves of colour, a bundle of blues one week and pinks the next. On planes and trains I edit, because a travelling mind is good for fixing dialogue and finding the gaps in a character. My other working life deals with sensitive subjects in serious sectors, so I keep that identity and this one apart, and I am grateful to every reader who lets me. I would love to know whether you would rather have Sapphire or me on your boat.