What Inspired The Author To Write 'A Million Years Spent Lost At Sea'?

Twenty-year-old Ivy Laurent has built a reputation as a reckless party girl, but her wild behavior hides a secret: she has been deeply in love with her step-uncle, Matthias Thorne, a forty-year-old billionaire. Two years earlier, on her eighteenth birthday, Ivy drunkenly confessed her feelings and kissed him. Matthias rejected her gently, believing their relationship was inappropriate, and has avoided her ever since. Hurt and desperate for attention, Ivy spirals into rebellion until she is expelled from another university. Her parents finally give her an ultimatum: spend six months working with Matthias’s or lose all financial support. Matthias is furious when Ivy arrives. Determined to keep distance, he assigns her minor tasks assisting the research team developing revolutionary renewable energy technology. Ivy, however, refuses to behave quietly. Through constant teasing and bold confidence, she challenges Matthias’s restraint, while he struggles with feelings he has tried to suppress for years. Disaster strikes when a massive earthquake triggers a tsunami that destroys the island facility. During the evacuation chaos, Matthias and Ivy are left behind and presumed dead. Isolation forces them to confront their long-hidden emotions, and Matthias finally admits he has loved her for years. Their relationship finally becomes passionate. Working together, Ivy and Matthias escape. Ivy leads them through the jungle until they reach a hidden emergency beacon that finally brings rescue. Returning to civilization sparks public scandal over their controversial relationship. Families, investors, and Matthias’s ex-fiancée attempt to separate them. Refusing to keep it, Matthias publicly declares his love for Ivy and leaves his corporate role to pursue his research independently. Ivy begins studying environmental science and builds her own career. Despite opposition, they remain united, eventually returning to the island where Matthias proposes, beginning a shared future in love, research, and partnership.

I was the top engineer at the National Deep-Sea Research Center, and the only person in the world with experience in deep-sea rescue. When my sister’s submarine malfunctioned and was stranded ten thousand meters below the surface, I hung up on her distress call. Then I calmly walked into a police station and turned myself in for leaking classified research. A few minutes later, my father called. His voice was frantic and furious. “Your sister is missing. Where the hell are you? I’m ordering you to get to the site immediately and save her, or you won’t see a cent of the family inheritance!” I calmly pulled the blanket over my head and said into the phone, “I don’t have time, and you’re interrupting my sleep.”

Morgan is just trying to survive her cousin’s destination wedding in Bermuda. She didn’t come prepared for emotional damage, and she certainly didn't expect the biggest drama of the weekend to involve a head injury, a blocked tunnel, and a very confusing run-in with three dudes dressed like they raided a Pirates of the Caribbean casting call. Turns out they’re not LARPing. They aren't actors. It's not a fun sunset cruise. No. They’re privateers. Like, real ones. From the actual year 1725. And Morgan? She’s stuck. She may have a pretty good handle on how to survive in the wilderness, thanks to her ex-Green Beret dad. But eighteenth-century ships, sexist crewmates, and suspicious captains aren’t exactly her area of expertise. Especially not Flynn, the broody, grumpy, maddeningly handsome Captain who might rather toss her overboard than deal with whatever disaster she’s brought onto his ship. But as danger closes in, from rival ships to secrets Morgan didn’t mean to bring with her, she’ll have to find her place in this brutal new world. That is… if she doesn’t drive Flynn to keelhauling her first. Or fall for him. Maybe both. Adventure, slow-burn tension, and fish-out-of-water chaos collide in this swoony, high-stakes romantic tale across time. For fans of enemies-to-lovers, pirate drama, and heroines who don’t know when to shut the fuck up.

Not long after getting married to my husband, he says he wants to teach me how to scuba dive. My leg cramps when I'm practicing alone in the deep sea. However, my husband, a swimming instructor, chooses to save his unattainable love—she's jumped into the sea to commit suicide. I don't ask him for help. Instead, I allow myself to slowly sink. In my past life, I stopped my husband from leaving. He saved me with gnashed teeth and allowed his first love, Millie Quirke, to drown. By the time he went to save her, she'd already disappeared in the water. He comforted me and told me it was okay, that he was glad he'd saved me. However, one night, he brought me back to the seaside. Just as I let my guard down, he grabbed my neck and plunged my face into the water. Then, he dragged me out before I could suffocate. "You were just cramping—it would've passed! But Millie got dragged away by the current because of you! You can remain in the ocean with her!" When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the day I was scuba diving.

Robert Blackwell promised to marry me, then postponed it thirty-eight times. The fifth time, a car crash broke eight of his ribs, and I signed seven critical-condition notices. The tenth time, on the way to get our marriage license, he and the car were thrown into the sea, and his suit was torn apart by sharks. By the thirty-eighth time, his heart disease had worsened and his life was hanging by a thread. Eight months pregnant, I changed flights three times and flew twenty-three hours across half the world to find him. When the door opened, a little boy who looked exactly like him lifted his face and said, "I thought Mom was back." Robert rushed out barefoot, panic written all over his face. I turned around and saw my best friend of twelve years standing behind me with a key in her hand. The little boy ran to her and threw himself into her arms, calling her Mom. So the fiance I had waited seven years for was my best friend's secret husband all along. "I will not wait through these thirty-eight near-death weddings anymore." "Robert, I do not want you either."

After the cruise ship strikes a hidden reef, panicked passengers shove me and Kristen Langford into the sea. My boyfriend, Elijah Jensen, is the ship's captain, so he plunges into the water. But instead of saving me, he grabs Kristen and boards the last lifeboat. I thrash and cry for help, but he slaps my hand away. "You can swim. Stop pretending for attention!" Elijah snaps. "Kristen's body temperature is dropping. I have to get her to a hospital!" The waters around me are pitch-black, and his words feel like a death sentence. When the tracking bracelet I always wear is discovered inside a shark, Elijah dives alone into shark-infested waters, searching for three days and nights. In the end, the brilliant captain who once ruled the oceans can never sail again.