The Day Of The Wave by Becky Wicks

The Day Of The Wave by Becky Wicks
Publication date: May 1st 2015
Genres: Adult, Romance

Isla and Ben were just sixteen when the Boxing Day tsunami tore through their beach resort in Thailand. Just days after forming a life-changing bond, both were missing and presumed dead. Unbeknown to each other and haunted by one of the biggest natural disasters in world history, Isla and Ben are living very different lives, until over a decade later when a chance encounter throws them back together.
Based on real life events, The Day of the Wave is a story of healing, learning to let go, and figuring out when to hold on with everything you have left.
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The Day of the Wave - based on a true story.
Hi! Thank you so much for having me on the blog!
So yes, The Day of the Wave is based around the catastrophic tsunami that crashed through 14 countries and affected 5 million people on Boxing Day 2004. The idea actually came about last November when I was on vacation in Sri Lanka. It felt like everyone we met who worked and lived there had a story about that day, and what happened afterwards. It really got to me.
I was in Sri Lanka for a month and in some places you can still see the effects of it, ten years later. It was heartbreaking.
I had so many dreams while I was there, about tsunamis crashing into me and the house I was in, and I started to feel a bit haunted by this story, which was growing in my imagination, about a guy and a girl who’d known each other before the event, who were torn apart and then reunited.
I started to wonder how I might incorporate the tragedies and the stories of hope and reconstruction I was hearing, into a work of fiction. I knew it would have to be quite raw and emotional but not all dark. A lot was born from the wreckage, too.
Ultimately I wanted it to be a story of hope, as much as one about dealing with loss. I wanted love to be born from the wreckage.
I set the book in Thailand because it was also affected hugely and also ‘cause I’ve spent a lot of time there too. There was more on Thailand to help my research online than there was about Sri Lanka so it just kind of worked out that Ben and Isla’s story was based there.
It was tough to write in parts but I hope I’ve done the idea justice and honoured the memories of those involved, because I was so inspired by all the incredible survival stories I was hearing and reading. I tried to include as many as possible in The Day of the Wave, told through the eyes of Isla and Ben, but they will always haunt me, as I’m sure they will those who went through it on Boxing Day, 2004. It was a huge reminder of how small we are and how we remain at the mercy of mother nature, no matter what we do.

Becky Wicks lives in Bali and scribbles books, and she’s mostly powered by coffee. Her first book in the Starstruck Series, Before He Was Famous recently reached #1 in Amazon’s Coming of Age and New Adult & College categories, and her three travel books, published by HarperCollins are online to make feet nice and itchy. Mostly though, she loves to write love stories. She blogs most days at beckywicks.com and always welcomes distractions on Twitter @bex_wicks. Especially if you have photos of cats.
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