On completing her first novel former QUT Business/Communication graduate Rebecca Sparrow couldn't believe her achievement.
After all it was just a few short months ago that she was sitting on her mother's couch in her pyjamas eating out of a box of Froot Loops contemplating the dismal state of her life.
A meeting with popular Brisbane author Nick Earls changed all that as the concept for Rebecca's first book titled The Girl Most Likely was born.
"I was interviewing Nick for an article for the travel magazine I was writing for at the time, and he asked me why I was freelancing for the magazine when I used to be its editor," Rebecca said.
"Well, I just blurted out my whole life story like some maniac about how I'd left my job to go to America to marry my boyfriend of three years and then realised I'd made a major mistake and ended up a divorcee with no job.
"He just looked at me and said 'Something tells me that you've got it in you to write a novel so I'm going to tell you how to do it'."
"I mean I hadn't done creative writing since high school. I'd done a lot of magazine articles but that's really different. So when someone says to you you've got to write 80,000 words, I was a bit like I don't know 80,000 words, I don't know how to put that together," laughed Rebecca.
"I went along with those mentoring sessions because I was a big Nick Earls fan and I was like 'Yeah, I'll write a book'. I'd turn up at his house for these mentoring sessions and would be more in awe over the fact that I was in his house!
"But finally I committed and it was great. Using Nick's technique I had the whole storyline pictured in my head like a film six months before I started writing the book."
Part autobiography, part fiction, 'The Girl Most Likely' is a comical portrayal of the character Rachel Hill, a self-absorbed woman with no direction in her life after she finds herself dumped by her American husband a few short days after being married by an Elvis look-a-like in Las Vegas. Having realised her mistake, Rachel promptly stashes the newly arrived divorce papers into the fridge and embarks on a cryptic journey of rediscovery.
Happy to take on the title of 'Nick Earls in a skirt' it's no wonder that similarities are drawn between the two authors' styles given that Nick mentored Rebecca throughout the writing process.
"I like to tease him now, that it was like the literary version of My Fair Lady, you know - 'you, over there I want to turn you into a novelist!'." she said.
Rebecca said the transition from public relations/ travel writer to novelist was relatively easy given her education through QUT.
"The thing that I really liked about business/communications was that it got me into so many different areas," she said.
"I got a job with Flight Centre International doing their PR and then it was through them that I started editing their travel magazine. That's how I ended up meeting Nick Earls, I did a story on him. So, on that level thanks to my degree, it was able to get me to that point.
"On another level the degree is really well respected and very flexible 'if you can write then it can really get you in any where from research positions to being a magazine editor - it opens a lot of doors for you."
Rebecca is already working on her next book, another comedy about female friendship. In the meantime she will take part in two panels at the Somerset Writers Festival on the Gold Coast from March 29-30.
'The Girl Most Likely' is published by UQP and is available in all good book stores.
