Diving and Adventure Storytelling with Nicholas Harvey
Why does the underwater world create such powerful stories?
In this episode, I’m joined by bestselling author Nicholas Harvey to explore the unique tension, beauty, and danger of diving, and why it makes such a compelling backdrop for adventure fiction.
Nicholas has spent years diving around the world, from coral reefs in the Caribbean to eerie shipwrecks and historic war graves. But what makes his work stand out is that he doesn’t just imagine these environments; he experiences them firsthand, then brings that realism into his storytelling.
We dive into what it actually feels like to breathe underwater for the first time. The mix of fear and freedom. The calm that comes with experience. And the ever-present awareness that, if something goes wrong, it can go wrong fast.
We also explore how diving naturally creates tension in storytelling. The limits of air. The challenge of communication. The need for precision and control in an environment where humans simply don’t belong.
Nicholas shares how he balances technical accuracy with gripping storytelling, why authenticity matters to him, and how real dive sites, and real risks, shape the scenes in his books.
If you’ve ever been curious about what lies beneath the surface, or why the ocean continues to capture our imagination, this is one you don’t want to miss.
In This Episode, We Explore:
- Why the underwater world creates instant tension – limited air, restricted movement, and zero margin for error make every moment count.
- The paradox of fear and freedom – how diving is both calming and confronting at the same time.
- Why realism matters in storytelling – from dive equipment to decompression limits, the details shape the stakes.
- Using environment to drive story – wrecks, darkness, and confined spaces as natural sources of drama.
Episode Timestamps
- 01:02 - Why Diving Fits Fiction
- 02:17 - First Dive Experience
- 04:59 - Underwater Tension Explained
- 06:12 - Wreck Diving Close Calls
- 08:40 - War Wrecks and Preservation
- 11:47 - Writing Authentic Dive Worlds
- 14:27 - Thriller Pacing Underwater
- 18:19 - Gear and Tech Accuracy
- 20:52 - Origins of Adventure Love
Links Referenced in This Episode:
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If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com. I’d love to hear from you!
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Transcript
Beneath the surface of the ocean, the rules change.
Speaker A:Light fades, sound disappears.
Speaker A:Every breath matters.
Speaker A:It's a place where we're only visitors, and fragile ones at that, entirely at the whim of nature.
Speaker A:Maybe that's why, for as long as we've been telling adventure stories, what lies beneath the waves has held such power over our imagination.
Speaker A:And today we're going to find out exactly what it's like.
Speaker A:Hey, I'm Luke.
Speaker A:I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.
Speaker A:I travel the world looking for stories to put into my books and share with you right here on the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker A:Just quickly, before we dive in, get it pun intended.
Speaker A:Most podcasts grow through recommendations, so please, please, please share this with any adventure lovers in your life.
Speaker A:Let' going Today we're exploring why diving makes such a compelling backdrop for adventure fiction.
Speaker A:We're going to think about what it does to tension, to character and to story, and why some writers feel the need to go there themselves rather than just imagine it safely from dry land.
Speaker A:But don't worry, we're in good hands.
Speaker A:USA Today best selling author Nicholas Harvey is our divemaster.
Speaker A:In his A.J.
Speaker A:Bailey series, which after reading I certainly want to give diving a go, he takes us beneath the waves around the Cayman Islands and actually across the Caribbean.
Speaker A:But Nick makes a point of exploring the real underwater locations he writes about himself, from coral reefs to shipwrecks, to shark filled waters to icy glacial pools.
Speaker A:Nick, welcome to the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker A:Oh, it's exciting to talk about this.
Speaker A:Now I've yet to actually try scuba diving, but it's definitely on the list.
Speaker A:I've got a friend, in fact, who's really into it and he keeps saying, right, we must do it.
Speaker A:But he's suggesting going to sort of like a lake in Yorkshire, which sounds.
Speaker B:Much less fun than a quarry somewhere.
Speaker A:Yeah, sounds much less fun to the sort of stuff than you do.
Speaker A:But take me back to that first dive, you know, if I'm there in that quarry in Yorkshire or, or in the Cayman Islands, wherever it might be, what should I expect?
Speaker A:What's it, what's it like?
Speaker B:Yeah, so it's, it's, it's a very unique experience the first time you do it because we've all been in a pool, right, and we swum underwater and done all that kind of thing.
Speaker B:But it's a bit different.
Speaker B:You know, we're humans, we're not supposed to breathe underwater.
Speaker B:There's a sense of a very foreign environment.
Speaker B:But it's almost like cutting the lead, you know, it's like this amazing freedom.
Speaker B:And I. I'll be honest, I tried it for the very first time in America when I'd come over to America as a young lad in a friend's swimming pool.
Speaker B:And I'm like, oh, this is bloody good.
Speaker B:I like this.
Speaker B:This is fun.
Speaker B:I'm swimming around the bottom of this pool.
Speaker B:And then they went out to Catalina Island.
Speaker B:We were in California, and it's cold water, and it all looked very dark and murky.
Speaker B:And I'm like, yeah, I don't fancy going in there.
Speaker B:And I was really.
Speaker B:I didn't like the idea of going in there.
Speaker B:And we were.
Speaker B:Happened to be in the Cayman Islands on a trip after I'd been married for a couple of years to.
Speaker B:And Cheryl had been diving before, some resort dives, a little tester things.
Speaker B:And she's like, you should try it out.
Speaker B:I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker B:I grew up in England.
Speaker B:And when you look off the coast, it doesn't look very appetizing to get in there amongst things, you know, and all the creepy crawlies and things that can bite you underwater.
Speaker B:And she said, now you gotta try it.
Speaker B:You gotta try it.
Speaker B:And she said, so I jump in the pool and they do the pool work with you.
Speaker B:And I did the same thing.
Speaker B:I swam around underneath.
Speaker B:And I'm like, well, this is great.
Speaker B:I love this.
Speaker B:But I'm like, I still don't know.
Speaker B:And we get out and this dive master, who was a English kid, who also, by the way, the name of Nick, who was wonderful lad, he said, look, I'm going to take you to this fabulous shipwreck.
Speaker B:You'll love it.
Speaker B:And I'm like, don't take me anywhere near a shipwreck.
Speaker B:I said, take me where there's lots of fishies and nice stuff.
Speaker B:Nothing that's going to bite me.
Speaker B:Nothing that's going to, you know, collapse on me.
Speaker B:And anyway, he took me to a D site called Aquarium.
Speaker B:And it was absolutely just surreal.
Speaker B:When you first go under and you start sucking on the regulator, the first thing you do, everybody does, is you start breathing really hard.
Speaker B:Cause you're like, can I really get air out of this Is going to be all right.
Speaker B:But once you get down there and realize that it breathes really smoothly, especially the calmer you are, the better it feels.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And then you just start looking around and it's like being completely immersed in this 3D kind of crazy world.
Speaker A:Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker A:It does sound like something that could easily become a bit of an obsession, a bit of an addiction, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, once we got rolling on it, about a year later or so, we got certified.
Speaker B:And then from that point on, our holidays have been.
Speaker B:Were geared around going diving.
Speaker B:Where are we going to go next?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you're talking there about really nice diving, looking at fish, you know, in warm water, something like this.
Speaker A:But let's flip that into an adventure story perspective.
Speaker A:Why does this lend itself to, you know, a great underwater scene?
Speaker B:There's a couple of reasons.
Speaker B:I mean, the majority of people on the planet haven't done it, so it's a.
Speaker B:It is something they know about, they've seen, they've watched, but they've never done it.
Speaker B:So there's something mysterious about that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And then the other part is we're not supposed to breathe, be under there breathing.
Speaker B:We're not supposed to do that right out of the gate.
Speaker B:Just the fact that you're X number of feet underwater and the further down you get, the more sinister it feels.
Speaker B:At any moment, it can go sideways in a big hurry.
Speaker B:There are times when you're diving.
Speaker B:You know, I'm pretty experienced.
Speaker B:I've done a lot of courses.
Speaker B:I'm pretty advanced in certifications and qualifications now.
Speaker B:But there still are times when you're like, yeah, if it goes to shit right now, this is going to be a big problem.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Can you give me an example?
Speaker A:Maybe it didn't go wrong, or maybe it did go wrong and something happened.
Speaker B:You're very aware when you're inside things like.
Speaker B:Like wrecks.
Speaker B:So, you know, I.
Speaker B:The idea of wrecks was just so foreign to me.
Speaker B:And then over the years, I've just learned to love wreck diving.
Speaker B:And in the Florida Keys there's some.
Speaker B:We've been in wrecks all over the world, but in the Florida Keys, there's some super ones.
Speaker B:And there's one called the Spiegel Grove, which is like 520ft long.
Speaker B:And it's a very odd vessel.
Speaker B:That was a military vessel.
Speaker B:It used to carry hovercraft and stuff in the back.
Speaker B:And it's got.
Speaker B:It's a warren inside of the upper decks.
Speaker B:They've got them all open to the side.
Speaker B:They've got cutouts so you can see the daylight.
Speaker B:But once you start penetrating further in and doing what they call, you know, technical wreck diving, where you're running a reel and different stuff like that, so you can find your way out.
Speaker B:There's.
Speaker B:It's pitch black, dark, you cannot see anything of Any light.
Speaker B:And there's rules in scuba diving of how far from the exit and how far from the surface constitutes recreational diving.
Speaker B:And when it steps over into technical or wreck diving.
Speaker B:And you know, I've been in, in those realms where it's technically definitely wreck diving and it's eerie.
Speaker B:I mean, it can get quite creepy.
Speaker B:You've got a torch and you get.
Speaker B:Carry a backup torch and there's lots of redundancy.
Speaker B:You're carrying a backup air supply.
Speaker B:So if that goes to hell, I will take the regulator out of my mouth and just while I'm at the same level, because that's a thing in diving.
Speaker B:You don't want to change depth while you're holding your breath.
Speaker B:But I'll take it out and actually practice being without the air supply for a short time or practice switching over the regs and things like that to give myself the confidence that it's right there if I need it and that kind of thing.
Speaker B:Because it can get quite creepy.
Speaker B:There's a lot of instances of little things, but there was one instance in the Spiegel Grove where there was four of us in a line and the one up ahead shining the light ahead and you can kind of see what's going on.
Speaker B:You're creeping through this little.
Speaker B:You can imagine the doorways in a boat and a ship underwater and you're kind of going through.
Speaker B:And next minute something flashed in my torch beam to the side and it was pretty big and it went underneath me.
Speaker B:And it was a grouper and it was a big size grouper, like a.
Speaker B:It wasn't the full grown Goliaths, but it was a big grouper.
Speaker B:It was at least 4ft long.
Speaker B:And it like brushed underneath me and flashed past the person behind me.
Speaker B:And when we came out, we were all like, holy crap, do you see the grouper?
Speaker B:And one of the group went, I didn't see it.
Speaker B:We're like, are you serious?
Speaker B:My wife was at the back of the line, she had a camera and you can see it like go through the light beams and it goes right past the person in front of her who never saw it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:That's amazing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Just being that close to the nature that's.
Speaker A:That's found its home in these places.
Speaker A:Some of these wrecks.
Speaker A:Am I right in assuming they.
Speaker A:Some have been artificially placed in, you know, as, as old ships.
Speaker A:End of their life.
Speaker A:They put them underwater for wildlife and whatever some of them have, they sunk through, you know, through accidents.
Speaker A:And these are places where people may have lost their lives is what I'm, what I'm getting towards.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:And there's a, there's a lot of that, especially in certain areas around the world where the, you know, the wars have been f. Especially the, the, the great wars.
Speaker B:So, you know, off the southern coast of the uk, it's riddled with wrecks and, and actually I got to dive.
Speaker B:I never dived in the UK before I left the UK for America.
Speaker B:It was later in life that I got into it.
Speaker B:But when we went back on a trip, a good friend of ours took us diving off the English coast and we had absolutely the perfect day.
Speaker B:It's flat calm and everything.
Speaker B:And we dove on a wreck that was sunk right at the end of the First World War by a German U boat.
Speaker B:And yeah, people died on that wreck and, and in various places that they're war graves.
Speaker B:So they're respected in certain ways and they're treated in, in certain ways.
Speaker B:But we've also dived, speaking of U boats, off the coast of North Carolina, we dived a U boat wreck way out offshore in 120ft of water that was sunk active during the war.
Speaker B:So, yeah, there's a lot of that and there's, there's something.
Speaker B:When we dove that U boat, it's.
Speaker B:I'm kind of obsessed with diesel U boats.
Speaker B:If, if you've read 12 Mile bank, my first book, you'll know.
Speaker B:To actually dive on a German U boat that fought in the war and was sunk during active duty, there was something just awe inspiring about it.
Speaker B:Simply amazing.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It's got to be quite eerie as well.
Speaker A:Right, Because I imagine.
Speaker A:Yeah, in some ways it's just as it was, you know, 80 years ago or however long.
Speaker A:You know, in other ways, obviously it's very different.
Speaker A:I don't know how it would survive in.
Speaker A:I've heard.
Speaker A:And what would have changed?
Speaker B:You know, it's relatively warm water off the coast of North Carolina.
Speaker B:I think it was high 70s.
Speaker B:And it dips down lower than that in the, in the, quite a bit lower than that in the winter.
Speaker B:But it's, but there's places like they just found Shackleton's ship, you know, off of Antarctica.
Speaker B:And basically it's preserved as it sunk, you know, and it's wood.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So wood.
Speaker B:Everywhere else you go to the Great Lakes and a depth in the Great Lakes, there's wooden wrecks that are still surviving with the wood on there because the water's so cold.
Speaker B:But wherever the water's warm, then most of that stuff rots.
Speaker B:Away and the steel remains.
Speaker B:So we've dived.
Speaker B:We were just in Australia and we did a liveaboard and we got to dive the ship.
Speaker B:And I'm.
Speaker B:Oh, gosh, I can't think of the name of it now, but it was the ship that was sent to get the mutiny of the bounty.
Speaker B:People that were captured was sent to get them and bring them back to the uk.
Speaker B:It hit a reef and sunk.
Speaker B:And now it's just basically the metal debris scattered on the ocean floor.
Speaker B:But, I mean, your diving history, it's incredible.
Speaker A:Yeah, I can imagine it.
Speaker A:And that really does sort of tap into your inspiration as an adventure story writer.
Speaker A:I can imagine.
Speaker A:And you're thinking this could be where whatever happens.
Speaker B:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker B:It's all inspirational.
Speaker B:I mean, I've gained inspiration for every single.
Speaker B:You know, I'm nearing a thousand dives and every one of them is fuel for inspiration.
Speaker A:So on that point, you make a point, I suppose, of diving the locations that you write about, or perhaps writing the locations that you dive about, whichever one comes first.
Speaker A:What details?
Speaker A:Or are you careful to make sure you put in details that you.
Speaker A:That you only discover underwater?
Speaker A:Bearing in mind, basically, most people would never know.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You know, most people wouldn't know that that thing is in that place at that depth the current comes at this direction.
Speaker A:Or do you sort of allow yourself to, you know, like, I might.
Speaker A:You'd look it up online, you'd do a little bit of due diligence in terms of getting the important things right, and then the story sort of has the overarching importance.
Speaker A:Or are you very much like, nope, the diving is the star of the show.
Speaker A:You know, the diving has to be right for me.
Speaker B:Yeah, it has to be authentic for me.
Speaker B:I have a pretty good following in the dive community and here, you know, we live in Grand Cayman now, but we've been traveling here for 25 years.
Speaker B:And so my characters are based here and I try.
Speaker B:And Most of the A.J.
Speaker B:Bailey series, the titles of the books, are real dive sites, but some of them aren't.
Speaker B:If I need a situation, they're the name of a dive site.
Speaker B:They're just not a real dive site.
Speaker B:So, like, the Wreck of the Raptor doesn't exist here.
Speaker B:I've actually had an email from someone who came visiting the island and they came back and they said no one knew where the Raptor was.
Speaker B:It's like, well, you probably should have read the forward that said it was invented.
Speaker B:But I needed a certain set of situations for a wreck to be in.
Speaker B:And I didn't have one here in Cayman that fit all of that, so I placed one here.
Speaker B:But the rest of it, I want people to know exactly where that wreck is.
Speaker B:If they're going around the wreckage of the Oriverde, or they're inside the Kittiwait, or they're diving on the Doc Paulson, I want them to.
Speaker B:They could use my book and that description as a roadmap.
Speaker B:I want it to be accurate.
Speaker B:And I have enough of a following from diversity that I want that to be true.
Speaker B:And in fact, the jetty, the dock that I use as their base of operations exists.
Speaker B:And some wonderful people, friends Chris and Kate, who run Indigo Divers have that location.
Speaker B:And I. I use the hut that they have, the pier that they have.
Speaker B:And it's just Mermaid divers.
Speaker B:And they've made.
Speaker B:Kate's quite artistic.
Speaker B:So she has this signboard on the front of the building says Mermaid Divers, which is my fictional dive group, and A.J.
Speaker B:Bailey and.
Speaker B:And all the characters on there, and people will go there just to take a picture with the sign that's there and stuff like that, which is incredibly flattering and gets Indigo Divers a bit of work, too.
Speaker A:That is brilliant, isn't it, that you've got a stake in the real world from your fictional world.
Speaker A:Let's talk about sort of the technical things to do with diving, and you've mentioned some of them already, but I get the impression that they're very sort of methodical, very procedural, very well thought out, very slow moving almost, which is exactly what thriller novels often aren't.
Speaker A:You know, they're about making decisions quickly, about moving fast, about running into danger or away from danger or whatever.
Speaker A:How do you balance those two things in order to keep the story moving?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Basically, scuba diving is recreational.
Speaker B:Scuba diving is incredibly safe.
Speaker B:You're well trained when you do it.
Speaker B:You're normally with people that know what they're doing.
Speaker B:And it's supposed to be a calm.
Speaker B:You know, a lot of people think it's a.
Speaker B:It's a racing heart experience.
Speaker B:Underneath, there's a.
Speaker B:It's not.
Speaker B:It's a very.
Speaker B:It actually benefits you to have a low heart rate.
Speaker B:You'll use less air consumption, it'll all go better.
Speaker B:So most of it is.
Speaker B:And I've swam amongst 30 sharks with a relatively low heart rate, and that's the way it should be.
Speaker B:But everybody kind of knows.
Speaker B:And this gets back to what we talked about at the beginning.
Speaker B:Why does it make a.
Speaker B:Why is it tense?
Speaker B:Because it can go wrong, and it can go wrong very quickly.
Speaker B:And when it does go wrong, it goes really wrong in a big way.
Speaker B:So there's always that lingering danger, right, of something's going to go bad.
Speaker B:And then what I do is I'm very keen on keeping everything not just true to location, but true to the technicalities of diving.
Speaker B:So they can't do things that would have an adverse, like if they just bolt to the surface all of a sudden, because they've got to get out of that situation, they're probably going to get the bends.
Speaker B:That's what would happen, right?
Speaker B:So in all likelihood, that's what's going to happen.
Speaker B:So unless I want to give them the bends, they're never going to do that.
Speaker B:And the gas consumption levels, the depths that they're diving to, are all within realms of possibility.
Speaker B:And then what I try and do, which gets trickier and trickier the more books you write, is put them in a.
Speaker B:Find another situation where they're pushing the bounds, right?
Speaker B:And you find this in every thriller, right?
Speaker B:You want it to be believable when your characters end up doing something that the reader goes, well, that was stupid.
Speaker B:Then you've lost that reader, right?
Speaker B:They're like, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker B:So they've got to be in a set of circumstances where some stuff goes wrong that forces them to do things that you wouldn't normally do.
Speaker B:So if AJ, it's pretty tense.
Speaker B:If AJ's like 120ft down doing a technical dive, and what she needs to reach is below a wreck that's inverted, and there's a really narrow gap for her to go through, and she can't fit through there with a tank on her back.
Speaker B:And she has to remove the tank and set it aside.
Speaker B:Just have a long hose with the rag in her mouth to crawl inside to reach what's in there.
Speaker B:So would she do that?
Speaker B:Well, you won't do that on a recreational dive.
Speaker B:And if you're with a dive master, he would have a fit and you'd never dive with that OP again.
Speaker B:But when they're paid, my characters are paid to go discover something in this wreck, and that's the only way that they can get to what they need.
Speaker B:It's a risk versus reward that she decides to take.
Speaker B:You know, so that happens.
Speaker B:A wreck shifts, a delicate wreck shifts at, you know, 180ft underwater.
Speaker B:When she's doing a technical dive on this pinnacle that's 50 miles offshore, it forces an emergency situation that she now has to get out of.
Speaker B:So that's what I try and do.
Speaker B:I try and have some outside force or influence in some way generate the tension that creates this incredible scene that's.
Speaker B:That's going to make you hold your breath.
Speaker A:Yeah, I can, I can imagine that.
Speaker A:And I think that as you say, just the situation itself has that tension, doesn't it?
Speaker A:Because.
Speaker A:And it's the fact that communication is a bit more difficult.
Speaker A:So even if you're with someone, you're, you're doing so with, with hand gestures or whatever.
Speaker A:Do you.
Speaker A:With the technology, are you really on the money with that?
Speaker A:Because I know you talk about dive computers and these sorts of things.
Speaker A:These are all things that you.
Speaker A:That exist.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You don't bend.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:You don't bend any rules with that and have like something else, you know, it's all very much like this is real.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, not at all.
Speaker B:Everything is.
Speaker B:And, and I have my characters dive with the gear that I've.
Speaker B:I feel most comfortable in.
Speaker B:I've used shearwater dive computers, which for me are absolutely the top of the line and I rely on it.
Speaker B:I put my life in its hands.
Speaker B:So I am super confident with it.
Speaker B:So I'm happy to fit AJ Bailey to dive for the shearwater.
Speaker B:And I use Dive Rite Equipment, which is again, top of the line.
Speaker B:They make a lot of tech stuff, but they do some recreational stuff and I love their gear, I love div.
Speaker B:Diving in it.
Speaker B:So AJ dives in dive right gear and it's.
Speaker B:I want that to be correct when she reaches with a hand to grab a piece of equipment or put air in her bcd, it's going to be in the right place and it's going to be done in the right way because again, I've got people that I'm going to get emails if it's not all of that kind of technical stuff.
Speaker B:But there's.
Speaker B:When I did the first story I did, which is Queen of the Island Skies, where she AJ did a technical dive, meaning she went below recreational depths on mixed gases.
Speaker B:Good friend of mine, Drew, actually his name is back in the UK now, he was divemaster here, taught tech diving.
Speaker B:I got hold of Drew and said, hey, run this through the computer for me.
Speaker B:I want this set of scenarios and then this is going to happen.
Speaker B:So this will be the new set of scenarios and I need to find a way of getting out of it.
Speaker B:And it was great.
Speaker B:He was super helpful and I learned quite a bit in that process.
Speaker B:But it really inspired me.
Speaker B:I'm like, I don't Want to have to get hold of somebody to know how to do that.
Speaker B:So I took my technical diving course when I was in Bonaire, and now I have that computer program.
Speaker B:And so when she does a technical dive, I can play with all those numbers, and they're all accurate.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:I love that that sort of.
Speaker A:The books have inspired your own.
Speaker A:You've been inspired by your own writing to sort of practice there.
Speaker B:And you talked about locations.
Speaker B:You know, which comes first, the location or the writing is.
Speaker B:It's been both at times, but most of it we've been there.
Speaker B:Then I'll write about it because I've been there and experienced that location.
Speaker B:I mean, basically, my books are set in the Cayman Islands, but I've taken AJ Offshore twice.
Speaker B:I've taken her to the Keys.
Speaker B:Cause we lived in the Keys for two and a half years and dove all.
Speaker B:And she dove all the wrecks there.
Speaker B:It's called Wrecks of Key Largo.
Speaker B:And she dives all the big wrecks there.
Speaker B:And I did dive that's mentioned in that book, including the engine rooms for the Spiegel Grove.
Speaker B:And then in Bonaire's, where I did my technical dive.
Speaker B:That's the other place I put her and her cohort, Reg, to do some dives in Bonaire.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:So I asked this question to everyone on the podcast.
Speaker A:I think it's a really nice sort of touch point for us all to connect through this.
Speaker A:If you look back through your writing life and your diving life, what adventure stories, whether they're books or whether they're films or whether they're legends that were told to you around the campfire, wherever, you know, first planted that love of adventure in your.
Speaker A:In your psyche.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Jacques Cousteau.
Speaker B:I can recall as a kid watching those documentaries of this underwater stuff and this beautiful clear ocean, and he's down there amongst the fish and everything.
Speaker B:It, it's.
Speaker B:It really struck a chord with me early on and registered with me.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And as I said, I had this kind of phobia, a fear of going underwater.
Speaker B:They look great.
Speaker B:But then I had this.
Speaker B:I was really creeped out by structures and things that weren't supposed to be underwater, that were underwater.
Speaker B:So it was a phobia that I.
Speaker B:My wife helped me get beyond, and then I got way beyond to go the other way, where I actually try and seek it out.
Speaker B:So I think that I also grew up in a motor racing family.
Speaker B:I raced karts when I was a kid cars, taught race car driving.
Speaker B:My first career up until six years ago.
Speaker B:Was motorsports my whole life, so some consider that fairly adventurous and so and certainly risky, less risky now than it always used to be.
Speaker B:But I grew up in that world, so risk for excitement has been a trade I've made my whole life.
Speaker A:Really fantastic.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:Nick, that was great.
Speaker A:Where can people find you and your stories and all about your adventures online?
Speaker B:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker B:HarveyBooks.com, you can jump on my website and take a look there.
Speaker B:And there's all of the series that I write, not just the AJ Baileys, the Nora Summers and Kat Cromwells are on there too.
Speaker B:And yeah, my stuff's available through the Amazon system and Audible.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:This is the Adventure Story Podcast.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for hanging out today.
Speaker A:It's been great to spend some time with you.
Speaker A:If you've enjoyed the show today, please subscribe.
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Speaker A:If you have a story or a guest you'd like me to interview, please let me know in the comments or email helloukerichardsonauthor.com and if you need more adventure in your life, and let's be honest, who doesn't, you might like the Adventure Society.
Speaker A:This is my weekly newsletter in which I invite you to travel with me, to show share my real world adventures and to find out first when a new story, a new season of the podcast drops or anything else that might be a little bit fun.
Speaker A:Head over to lukerichardsonauthor.com adventuresociety to find that.
Speaker A:And if you're a fan of adventure stories like the ones we talked about today, check out my books@lukerichardsonauthor.com Bon voyage, enjoy the adventure and I'll see you next time.
