Why I Wrote Love, Uncharted

People ask me that question more than any other. And the honest answer is: I didn't set out to write a romance novel. I set out to save something before it faded.

My wife and I have been cruising together for over thirty years. We've stood on the overlook in St. Lucia with warm bread in hand, watching the Pitons rise out of the sea below us. We've raced through the streets of St. John's in Antigua, laughing at nothing in particular, the kind of afternoon that happens when you stop planning and just go. We've toured a rum distillery in Barbados and decided we liked the island almost as much as we liked what came out of it.

And when the Caribbean ports gave way to the Mediterranean, the wonder didn't stop — it just changed scale. We've watched the sun come up over Santorini. We've walked the ruins at Ephesus in the early morning quiet before the tour buses arrived. We've raised glasses in Mykonos, wandered the streets of Venice at dusk, and sat in silence watching a Tuscan hillside turn gold. Thousands of miles at sea. Dozens of ports. A life built, in part, on those moments.

The problem with moments is that they slip. Not all at once — gradually, the way a photograph fades on a wall. You remember the feeling of a place before you remember the details. Then one day you can't quite call up the details at all.

I didn't want that to happen to us.

So I started writing. Not a memoir, not a travel journal — a story. A love story, set against the exact places we'd been, built from what I knew to be true about those destinations. The overlook in St. Lucia where the view hits you before the bread even cools. The narrow streets. The light on the water. The way a glass of local rum — or wine — tastes different when you're actually there.

Olivia and Lance didn't exist yet. But the world they would move through — that was already real.

Writing romance wasn't a genre I'd planned to enter. My background is nonfiction; I've published cruise guide books and spent decades thinking in frameworks and systems. But I discovered something in the process of building this story: structure and emotion aren't opposites. A slow-burn romance, done right, is one of the most disciplined narrative forms there is. Every scene has to earn the next one. Every moment of connection has to feel inevitable in hindsight, even though it surprised you when it arrived.

That challenge turned out to suit me.

What I also discovered was that writing about real places — places I love, places that hold weight for my wife and me — changed how I read the finished pages. The story wasn't just a story. It was a record. Proof that we'd been there, felt something, and paid attention.

The series tagline reads: Everything in this book is real except the names and the story.

I mean that literally. The ports, the ships, the excursions, the views — all of it drawn from life. If Olivia looks out at a bay and feels something shift in her chest, it's because that bay once did the same to someone standing exactly where she's standing. If she and Lance find themselves somewhere beautiful and slightly breathless, it's because my wife and I were there first.

I hope that authenticity reaches readers, even the ones who've never set foot on a cruise ship. Because ultimately Love, Uncharted isn't about cruising. It's about paying attention to the person beside you — and to the places that give you space to become more honest with each other.

That's what thirty years on the water taught me.

I just finally wrote it down.

Love, Uncharted is the first book in the Uncharted Horizons Series — set in the Caribbean, where it all begins. The second book, Beneath Mediterranean Skies, picks up where the sea takes them next. If you're ready to come aboard, you can find Book 1 on Amazon