Sharon Dogar

Sharon Dogar is a social worker who counsels troubled teens.

Waves is her first novel. The poignant coming-of-age story about a family dealing with the accident of their daughter, it took a while for Sharon to get started. "But then I had the moment,' " she explains. "That moment when a character just arrives in your mind and begs to be written - whether you want to do it or not. I remember it was lunchtime. I walked into the sitting room and had a thought: I was by the sea. And in that moment, I saw a boy with his back to me; he was in the kitchen of a beach house, looking at something on the wall. Looking at it with utter intensity and absorption. I knew straight away his name was Hal. I walked back into my own kitchen and wrote the prologue, immediately and completely, exactly as it remained in the final manuscript. And then I had to write a story to go with it!"

Sharon Dogar lives with her husband and three children in Oxford, England.