Terry Johnson: Hello, I'm Terry Lynn Johnson. I'm the author of Survivor Diaries Series. I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I wrote the first book Overboard. And then I'm going to read an excerpt.

The idea for this story came to me when I heard about the tragic, real life event that occurred in the Canadian waters off the coast of Vancouver. This hit home to me because I work as a conservation officer for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. I'm a Northern Marine Officer. I operate a large vessel and I patrol on the Great Lakes. And the story of Overboard, so it was a natural combination of my work experience knowledge and my own interests in the marine environment. I wanted to write a story to show readers what to do if they ever got into a situation such as the one I heard about on the news.

Now here's the first page of the book Survivor Diaries Overboard.

The boat swayed beneath me. I spread my feet apart to balance and lifted my face into the wind, it smelled like seaweed and salt and some kind of animal poop and it was awesome. "Put this on, Trav," mom ambushed me with a red and black suit. She held it open for me to step into like I was five and stuffed my arm into a sleeve. "What, no. What is that?" "It's an immersion suit, it's a rough day today and it's going to be chilly on the water." "Well, Stacy's not wearing one," I said. Older and wiser, my sister didn't look up from texting but she smirked for my benefit. I let mom do up the zipper, no point in arguing, every since my gym accident mom had been hovering. It was my life.