SAMARA Parish, award-winning author of “How to Survive a Scandal”, is “absolutely convinced” romance novels saved her life.

When she was 19, Samara’s mental health deteriorated to the point where she spent three months in a mental hospital.

“I have bipolar disorder and I was not very well,” she says.

“I had day leave. When you’re in there long enough they start to let you out for the weekend.”

Samara’s mum took her to a secondhand-book fair and she picked up her first romance novel, “The Viscount Who Loved Me”, by Julia Quinn.

“I was sitting back in my little room and I was falling off my bed laughing. After that I became obsessed, and I just kept reading more and more,” she says.

Now, Samara lives happily in Kambah and has published not only her debut novel “How to Survive a Scandal”, but also a second book, “How to Deceive a Duke”. A third book, “How to Win a Wallflower”, will be published on December 13.

Her first book was recently awarded the Romance Writers of Australia prize for Romantic Book of the Year (RuBY).

“It was the most ridiculous weekend. On the Friday night I got my first sale ribbon, on the Saturday I had my book signing, which was just amazing, and then I got the RuBY, and it was also my 40th birthday that day!”, she says.

When she was younger, Samara read lots of romance books and, while romance is a rich genre, she has tried to add her own experience to her own stories.

“I was reading a lot of romance that focused on the perfect heroine and focused on redeeming the male,” she says.

“I think I read that because I was looking for a partner and trying to redeem all the wrong people… when I was older I turned inward. I don’t need redemption, but I’m just trying to grow as a person. So, my heroines are very flawed, the story is about their growth as women.

“These flawed heroines are like the worst parts of me. My mother, when she read it, knew who I had based it on. A month later when my husband was reading it he told me he really hated this woman. It’s mostly the worst parts of me amplified. I’m not that bad, but I want to continue to explore my own growth.

“I went into [writing] wanting to give back to somebody else, and I have had people reach out and just say the past couple of years have been really hard and they’ve really struggled, and if it wasn’t for romance they don’t know how they would have gotten through it.”

She says her mental health has been stable for more than a decade and her love for romance hasn’t changed.

That first book took three years to write, the second a year and the third only 10 months.

“I didn’t have a deadline for the first one, I just finished it when I finished it,” she says.

Samara works full time as an engagement manager in the Australian National University (ANU) physics department, and has found adjusting her work hours has helped her dedicate “protected time” to writing.

“I still mostly write in my office. I do half an hour in the morning before work and then during my lunch hours I dictate. Because the ANU campus is beautiful, I just go down to the river, put my headphones in and just dictate as I walk and it’s just lovely,” she says.

Samara says that during her time in hospital romance novels were her escape.

“When I left, I left all the romance books I had bought for other people,” she says.

“I was admitted again four years later, and that hospital library of romance had grown. All my books were there, but other people had added to it. It was lovely.

“I think there’s a lot to be said for a genre where a happily-ever-after is guaranteed. No matter what happens the reader feels safe.”