Breaking Waves
Welcoming author Emma Simpson into The Book Room
Welcome to The Book Room! Come on in and grab a chair as we talk about books and our journeys to get them written, published, and seen in the world.
The connection and support shown to me as a fledgling author from the writing community have been phenomenal, so I thought I’d return some love to authors with newly published books and invite them to write a guest blog.
I was thrilled to be at the launch of
’s amazing memoir at this year, listening as Emma spoke with courage and heart about how the healing power of water has helped not only her as she navigates grief and chronic ill health, but how is has helped all the other women whose powerful stories she shares in breaking waves. Let’s hear from Emma about her life and writing journey.
Career Path
Up until five years ago my career was predicated on numbers, not words. My first degree was in mathematics, and I went on to become an air traffic controller – existing in three dimensions with arguably little scope for creativity in a role that rarely required me to write anything resembling a full sentence. After two life-altering events – my firstborn daughter contracting neo-natal meningitis and being taken into intensive care 4 hours after her birth, and the death of my beloved brother just a couple of weeks later through hospital malpractice, I started to become untethered from the world I had previously known. My daughter survived, and flourished and is now 18 years old, however as a result of my brother’s death as well as the circumstances around her birth, my mental health inexorably fractured. As I desperately tried to outrun my grief, my physical health began to deteriorate too, and ultimately, I had to give up my air traffic headset for good. I continued in the world of aviation for five more years, but while my mental health became much stronger, chronic health conditions relentlessly plagued me, and I made the decision at the outset of 2020 to walk away. With my family life hanging on by a thread, we decided to sell our house, forgo my ‘not insignificant’ income, and live in a fundamentally different way.
How the book came to be
There were two things I had felt myself drawn to during these years of oscillating health: one was the open water, the other was writing. As a pretty poor swimmer who was terrified of the sea, it never occurred to me what an incredibly healing role water would play in my life, but amid my grief, I felt such a pull to the ocean, and there it began. After that first sea swim, I began to venture into deep, dark lochs, muddy rivers, and crystal-clear lakes, finding both solace and companionship, comfort and inspiration at the water’s edge. When I wasn’t well, I would pick up a notebook and pen and write my way through my feelings, articulating the experience of what it means to be human. I would write blogs and travelogues, children’s poetry, and essays. In both those outlets, I found a magical kind of ‘flow’ state where my busy brain would stop for a minute, and just be in the experience.
And so it was, that when I found myself feeling very lost after the end of my twenty-year career, a new chapter slowly began to unfold. As I struggled to find my own identity, I began talking to other women at the shores of the lake where I now regularly swim, and noticed the similarities in our experiences. We all had such different stories, but with common themes and shared understanding. In the openness of storytelling that happens around the open water, I began to write down stories of what it means to be a woman, and the primal powers of womanhood and water in how we connect back to ourselves, to nature, and to each other for our well-being. The idea for Breaking Waves was born.
Getting an agent
2020 was the year of the global pandemic, so as the world changed, my book changed along with it. I could no longer meet people in person, but what did open up to me were online conversations from around the world. I spoke to women from Africa to Canada and Fiji to Finland about how we experience the water – not just to swim in, but to birth in, to float in, to grieve in, and to just be.
Alongside writing their stories, I put together a thorough book proposal as required for non-fiction submissions (for fiction submissions, the entire manuscript is expected). I took
’s Book Proposal Masterclass and it gives extraordinarily thorough guidance on how to structure and complete a high quality proposal. Once I had completed this I began to identify agents that I wanted to query. My proposal, just for context, was 80 pages long including sample chapters, follow on chapter summaries, market analysis, peers and competitors, PR & marketing strategies and much more. [I know that Beth currently has a course she is offering free ‘How to Get a Book Deal’ – I highly recommend taking a look.] In order to find agents I wanted to approach, I used a combination of Old Skool - The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook - and what was then relatively high tech – Google (!) - to find agents who were open to submissions in my genre of narrative non-fiction. Before I pressed send, however, I came across something else:A friend told me about an organisation called Byte the Book which connects authors to the publishing industry, and the ‘Virtual Agent Tables’ that they run. The idea is that you can run your synopsis and sample chapters by an agent (for a fee), and you receive an online session of 15 minutes of feedback on your idea, from two different agents. I thought this was worth a punt before sending my proposal off, so I signed up. When the date came around for me to have my feedback, the first agent I met with had loved the synopsis so much, she wanted to sign me! This was an outcome I had certainly not anticipated, but one lunch at The Ivy and some tough questions from the head of the agency later, I was signed by my agent, Edwina. That meeting also changed the course of the book once more, as they wanted it to be more than ‘a collection of beautiful stories’, but something with a defined narrative arc, and a reason for the reader to keep turning the page. That arc turned out to be part of my story – my brother’s story – how my world was ruptured by his death, and how the open water pretty much saved my life. It became a story of hope, of navigating loss and change, how we manage the inevitable ebb and flow of life, and of rediscovering joy and vitality through time spent in nature and through connecting with others.
The Book Deal
Breaking Waves was pitched to the ‘Big Five’ publishing houses, but it wasn’t picked up as it now fell into a ‘memoir’ category with my story being entwined throughout all the other women’s stories. I initially fell into the trap of not having a big enough social media following or celebrity status to be considered viable within memoir/biography, but after a few months of my agent feverishly pitching, Breaking Waves was picked up. Icon Books – an independent publisher specialising in ‘intelligent, quality non-fiction for a general audience’ offered me a book deal, and I delightedly accepted. [Note – Icon do accept non-solicited non-fiction submissions.]
The next 12-15 months were spent editing, re-structuring, copy-editing, perfecting and polishing Breaking Waves until it was ready to be launched into the world. I write about this whole process in detail in my Substack series The Book Deal Diaries which includes a 1-hour masterclass on how I went from book inception to book deal moment and continues into the present experience of launching, touring and book sales!
Book launch
Breaking Waves was officially launched on 27 March 2025 and is described as follows:
“A warm, reflective and uplifting memoir about healing wounds, reclaiming a voice and discovering freedom through the open water.”
It has received consistent 5-star reviews and wonderful feedback. I have so far toured from Northumberland to Brighton, spoken to several hundred people at festivals and bookshops, and have more festivals lined up in the summer and autumn. I don’t really know what I expected would happen with the book when I first had the idea, but I don’t think it was this! There were two clear things I wanted to achieve from the outset:
1. To hold a copy of my book in my hand
2. That Breaking Waves may reach someone who needs to read it just at that moment.
Both of those things have happened. What comes next is anybody’s guess, and in the meantime, I’m cracking on with book 2 which is all about tea, and how we pass down our culture, histories and rituals in ways other than words.
The whole experience has been surreal, wonderful, exhausting, overwhelming but overridingly absolutely bloody marvellous. The friends that I have made along the way, especially through Substack like
and have helped me to know that I am not alone, and for that I am so truly grateful.Life has a habit of shaking out in the most unexpected of ways, but one thing I know for sure: There is always another chapter.
Much love
Emma x
Links
Many, many thanks to Emma for her words this week. Here’s to the power of connection through our writing. If you have a book coming out, or one you’d like to share with the world that is already published, then do get in touch.
Fabulous post. I’m so happy for you and will source a copy of your book which sounds like a wonderful read!
This is such a fantastic post. You are both such huge inspirations.