Former Orange local Emma Warrender is still on a high after the launch of her debut novel, Driven, earlier this month.

Described as a "sexy, fast-paced, slow-burn romance with 'Fast and the Furious' vibes", Driven has been a labour of love for the first-time author and one that has landed Emma a two-book publishing deal with Hachette Australia.

"Yeah, I'm so excited about it!" says Emma, who explains that it was far from just being lucky that has seen her welcomed into the stable of one of the country's largest publishers; it's taken a whole lot of work to get here.

"It's been a two to three year journey of writing it and then getting agented and then finding a publisher. A gruelling process of constant edits for the last two years," Emma explains.

A former journalist now working in communications, Emma says she was always an English-over-maths kind of girl with a love for reading and storytelling. But, strangely, Emma says the idea that she might write a novel one day was not something that she considered when she was younger.

"I loved writing, but I just didn't, for some reason, want to be an author. I didn't think of it as being a career choice," she says, "which is probably why I went into journalism; journalism is storytelling and writing, and I enjoy that. So I went that way."

An avid fan of the romance genre, Emma says the creative spark came a few years back, when she was having trouble finding the kind of book she would like to read.

"I was reading so much. I was devouring like three or four books a week and it got to a point where I was like, fluffy romance isn't cutting it for me anymore, and I'm not finishing it, and then dark romance. Sometimes those books can focus just heavily on the 'spice ', and I like the 'spice', but I also need a plot," she explains.

"So then I was bold enough to think, I'll go and write the book that I want to read, and then I just created this fun world and put everything that I loved from all my other romance novels into the one."

But when Emma decides to do something, she is 'all in'.

"I enrolled in a few courses, novel writing and how to kind of tell the story and how to self-edit. I went to a writer's group and completed several drafts before I even thought about giving it to an agent," Emma says.

"Even once I got an agent, it was rounds of editing with her, and learning things that either work for the traditional publishing industry or just things that'll make the story, make more sense."

Sending her manuscript out to publishers, Emma faced a few rejections, but then came not one, but multiple offers, leaving her with a choice of who to trust her book with.

"And the one that I accepted is with Hachette, for a two-book deal, which is super exciting!"

Driven is set in the tropical town of Booker Bay, with Emma's lead character Gianna putting her life on the line street-racing her old Mustang.

"I thought for ages that the car inspo came because Fast and the Furious is one of my comfort movies, but four drafts in I realised it's because of my Dad. Growing up, he had all of these cars coming through the garage all the time and he would tell me stories from the 70s about the speedway," Emma recalls.

"It kind of went in one ear and out the other at the time, but I must have been listening because I've now brought street racing, world and speedway and all these other elements into the story."

There is another real-world inspiration that Emma is excited to be able to share with her readers.

"The book is dedicated to Chucky," she explains, "Chucky was my ridgeback and he is also a character in the book. I lost him a few months after I finished my first draft. So this is a really beautiful way that I get to honour him, and I'm excited for people to read about him and know that a best friend like him exists."