Leura resident Alan Gold's twin passions are travelling and writing historical novels - and he got to do both this year as part of the heritage trilogy he is co-writing with Mike Jones.
The series follows two families from ancient Jerusalem and their modern day Israeli and Palestinian descendants in back-and-forth sequence across 3000 years.
Each fast-paced book spans one millennium and throws all sorts of secret conspiracies at the main protagonists, placing them in constant danger.
Book one, Bloodline, set both in King Solomon's time and this decade, was published a year ago by Simon & Schuster while book two, Stateless, hit bookshop shelves last week and contains an intriguing Soviet-inspired sub-plot.
"For this book I travelled all over Russia from the great cities of St Petersburg and Moscow to the east coast and also all over Israel," Mr Gold said.
"It is set in the lead-up to the establishment of the State of Israel and also goes from the Roman occupation of Jerusalem to the Islamic renaissance in Baghdad and through until the Crusades.
"And I've just finished writing the [first draft of the] third book, Redemption, set in the 1890s during the Dreyfus Affair when the characters that are descendants of those in the ancient story meet with the descendants of the ones in the modern day story.
"For that I went to Spain, Portugal, France and Turkey and I've just got back from Vienna."
Mr Gold said while he always focuses solely on the storyline, sub-plots and central characters in the early stages of the writing process, his travels to scenes in his novels enriches the end result.
"Absolutely, the travelling makes a difference," he said.
"These days authors and publishers are trying to save a lot of money by doing the research [for a book] on Google.
"But what that doesn't give you is the sense of places and the people that live there - that's what a novelist has to pick up by themselves.
"Details of events in history you can often find out by talking to people along the way.
"You might learn about a tiny village and then you'll go there and find out more and you have all these tiny, different things that become essential parts of the narrative."
Mr Gold's next writing project will be a family affair, partnering with his son Raffe to start a company to produce a series of books about the lives of little known people who have quietly changed the world for the better.
"It's called Distinguished Lives and it will focus on people alive today who have led incredible lives but we don't hear about them, like people who have started charities that have helped hundreds of thousands around the world.
"I can't say too much more about it yet but we've just done our first one and we are going to publish it next year."
