J.H. Wallace briefly explored the academic life, studying music at Oxford University for a year before decamping to the Mediterranean in search of adventure. Soon based in Antibes, she became a cordon bleu cook on luxury yachts along the Med, adept at catering to wealthy and demanding charterers in the confined space of a yacht's galley. In the early 1980s she met her husband Dennis, and together they crewed yachts for another 20 years, before celebrating retirement with a six-year circumnavigation of the globe in their sailing yacht Aurora of Polruan. They finally settled on the Aegean coast of Turkey, by which time they had crossed the Atlantic four times and the Pacific once, visiting over 60 different countries. A gifted musician, in later years she indulged her passion for singing, and delighted audiences of friends with her renderings of arias from Italian opera. She also wrote a number of travel articles which were published in yachting magazines, and several works of fiction. Lanzarote is her first novel.