Emma Grey wrote The Last Love Note in the wake of her husband's death.

It was not the happily ever after Grey had imagined.

It would be fair to say she was consumed by grief.

"When Jeff first died, I wondered how we would survive, how I would survive, how the family would survive," she says.

"And it seemed impossible to even get through that first hour, let alone that first week. Then someone said the next step would be seven weeks.

"And I thought, how would I ever get through seven weeks, and then seven months? And then I found myself at seven months, and realised the next jump was seven years. I thought that just seemed like another lifetime away.

"And now it's six and a half years and here we are. We're still standing and thriving. It's been hard, and dark, and awful.

"You have no choice. People say, you're so strong. You're not strong. You just have to get up and do it."

One thing she did was write. Whether it be posts on social media, late night sessions on the computer, notes in her journals - writing helped her make sense of it all, as much as that's possible. She'd always been a writer. One holiday as a teenager she lost herself in Anne of Green Gables and spent the summer with a notebook and pen trying to write a novel. She's been writing ever since.

She's written two young adult novels, co-authored a non-fiction book on productivity with her colleague Audrey Thomas, written a parenting memoir, and works as an accountability coach, content producer and freelance writer.

"Jeff and I bonded over words," she says. Jeff was a history professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy and authored, and edited many books. He was also a one-time book reviewer for The Canberra Times.

"He believed in me as a writer when I was still stuck in the rejection roundabout and said it was a matter of when, not if, I would be published. I cling onto his belief in me to this day."

Jeff, from what I knew of him, would probably laugh at the irony of the fact that it was his death that inspired Grey's first adult novel which is all about life.

The Last Love Note is a fictional tribute to their love, and death, and everything in between. It's a heart-warming book, dark but optimistic, full of sadness and humour, with characters you genuinely care about. Kate Whittaker is dealing with her husband's death, raising a young son, trying to hold down a job and dealing with an overbearing mother. Caught in an impossible tangle of loss and longing, she wonders if she can risk her heart again.

Jeff would be so proud. If there's one more moment of sadness here it's that he'll never read the book.

"I know he'd be proud," says Grey. She laughs then and says, "He'd also say he's 'not the target audience for this book', but he'd read it and I think he'd love it." He would. That's the kind of man he was.

"Jeff wouldn't have referred to himself as a romantic, but was one," she says.

"He sat through all the big rom-coms with me, invariably interrupting with some annoying comment at the crucial moment ... but he appreciated the romantic in me, and was deeply loving."

She knew early on she'd end up writing about grief in some form.

"Write what you know, isn't that what they say?"

But she didn't know which form it would take, a memoir, non-fiction, practical guide.

"When Jeff died a lot of people gave me books, there were a lot of memoirs and self help books. And then somebody gave me a novel and I just devoured it. It was about a widow who had a five year old whose husband had a heart attack.

"It was just so familiar to me that it did help me make some sense of the abyss that I had fallen into, made me feel less alone, I suppose.

"There's really something about writing fiction that allows you to feel everything, but you're not giving away your personal story."

She's keen to stress, however, that while the novel is not a memoir "there are some scenes in the book which I wrote to immortalise the more amusing moments from our marriage". There are scenes too taken from her life since, one which involves a hand grenade.

"I look down at my son. He's got his dad's golden curls, his freckles, his mischievous blue eyes ... and his grenade?"

"My editor wanted to take that out, she thought it was too far-fetched, but it actually happened, the whole scene with the police, the defence force guys turning up. It was a genuine grenade Jeff had picked up from some battlefield as a military historian. Seb wandered out with it in his hand! Looking back now you have to laugh."

She says there is a lot of humour in grief - there has to be.

"You go to a funeral and then you go to the wake afterwards and there's usually a lot of laughter in the room. We remember the funny things that happened.

"I wanted this book to be a deep story that was sad and tragic and had all of the kind of gravitas that you would need to have for this topic but at the same time, I wanted it to have a lot of light and just be a really good read.

"I want people to emerge from the book feeling the way you feel when you come out of a really good romantic comedy in the movie theatre and you're sobbing and you've got mascara down your cheeks and maybe you believe in love again even though you've been dragged through the depths."

Without giving too much away, the book does have a happy ending. It's not an easy journey, in many ways, even for the reader, but at the end you're full of hope.

That hope has attracted New York publisher Zibby Owens, who has said The Last Love Note is a "dream come true" for her publishing company, and plans to publish it in the American summer.

Emma is coming to terms with the fact that her ending is a different one now, not the one she had planned with Jeff.

"I had someone say to me last week that she read the book, someone who knew it was fictionalised, and she said she was disappointed that the ending wasn't based on my life.

"She said, 'I wanted you to be happy', and then she back-tracked and said, 'Not that you're not happy'.

"Am I happy? Most days, now. Early on definitely not. You're handed this new future that you didn't want and you're forced to carve out something else in a different shape from what you had. You have to find that within yourself.

"If you're just looking for the next person to rescue you from this horrible grief, it is not going to work. It's beautiful when that happens, and I've got lots of friends who that's happened to and I certainly don't rule it out, but right now I'm not looking for it. I think it's really important to find a way to be fulfilled on your own."

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As well as her writing, she's found a new passion in photography, unashamedly chasing the Aurora Australis and capturing photos of it from just south of Canberra, and taking macro photos of insects and plants. Sebastian starts high school this year, he's passionate about music and has performed his original Electronic Dance Music at several Canberra community festivals. Her parents, Barrie and Claire, are her biggest fans. They both make an appearance in the book, and so does her mother's struggles with dementia.

Emma has become an advocate for heart health, working with the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Unit and the Heart Foundation among others to raise awareness.

"Go get checked, even if you think you're okay," she says.

"Heart disease can be insidious, without symptoms until it's too late. A GP will check your blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol and ask about lifestyle factors. The most important thing to know is that there's treatment available, and having things like stents inserted can be a simple day surgery procedure. It's something that might have saved Jeff's life.

As a result of Jeff's death and Grey's encouragement, several of her friends or their partners had heart checks and were diagnosed with very treatable heart conditions.

She's also found great reward in helping other young widows deal with it all.

"There's so much on top of the grief that you don't think about, dealing with banks who won't discuss accounts because your dead partner was the primary account holder, dealing with government agencies, changing names on all sorts of forms ... the administration of death can be relentless."

Mental health can be a struggle. Never be too afraid to ask for help, she says. Seek professional help, rely on friends and family and even strangers. There's no shame in it. I think our family keeps Canberra's psychologists in business.

She and Sebastian have found a community through Feel the Magic, Australia's leading grief education program for children who have lost a parent. They run camps for children aged seven to 17.

"One in every 20 children, from seven to 17, will experience the death of a parent. You're not only dealing with your own grief, but trying to help your child through it all as well, that's been one of the hardest things. I just needed to know that Seb would be okay and I look at him now and his dad would be proud."

She's been helping one young widow whose husband died in December get through these first few messy weeks.

"She said she couldn't wait to read the book and I told her it might be a bit triggering, but she was keen to know she wasn't alone.

"With this book I want to give people hope, it's not about finding new love down the track, but finding themselves, discovering who they can be."

Perhaps being in charge of their own new happy ending, whatever it may be.