Being an author wasn't something Gillian Cook ever expected herself to be.

And now, with her publishing her first children's novel - Hoko's Choice - Gillian has more books brewing in her mind.

Unexpected author Gillian Cook. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

Hoko's Choice was inspired by a dream Gillian had back in 2001 and Gillian says the dream was so influential she woke up in awe.

'What do you talk about, when you wake up and there's a dream?”

Her dream was about a moss that 'looked like rice bubbles”. This moss grew and grew to cover the entire floor.

'This wasn't just a floor [covering], it represented enticement, and seduction and beauty and want and desire and all those emotions and the whole game that can be played around all these emotions,” says Gillian.

Reading mostly reality, romance and drama growing up, Gillian never envisaged herself writing novels, let alone children's futuristic fantasy.

'It's been an incredible process, because I didn't read fiction as a kid,” Gillian says, and she spent a year reading children's novels before deciding what age group she was going to aim her first novel at, finally settling on ages 10 and above.

Gillian developed systemic, chronic muscle and joint pain in 2007, and when doctors couldn't help her, 'that's when I started to start clearing what I could of myself internally, and start to look on the inside,” she says.

'I thought I used to be in control, I used to know what was going on in my life, everything was in order, and suddenly all of that was gone.

'Then I had to look at what I had left – I have a bloody painful body that I can't move.

She began trying healing ritualsreiki and opening the heart meditation.

'It's like smiling to your heart – in fact Hoko does it in the book, and more so in the next book,” says Gillian.

Hoko's Choice will have a mini book launch here in Tauranga on April 20 at Welcome Bay Community Centre from 1pm-3pm.

There will also be a competition for readers to draw a picture inspired by Hoko's Choice that Gillian will use in her next book.

And this mysterious sequel?

'It's under wraps because if I told you much about it you'd have to get to the end of [the first] book to understand it,” says Gillian, 'so it's certainly still about Hoko and the characters that are in it, but a completely different storyline.”