Vanishing villages, a blue door in the middle of nowhere, and lots of mystery are the ingredients for Bermudian author Nadia Aguiar's latest book.

'Secrets of Tamarind', the second in her Tamarind trilogy has just been released by Penguin in the United Kingdom and Bermuda. It will be available in the United States through Feiwel & Friends next July.

In this book, siblings Simon, Maya, and Penny return to Tamarind, the mystical island of adventure with the help of an old friend (hint, hint). They find Tamarind more mysterious than ever. As they venture deeper into Tamarind, the peril mounts. Can the children save the island before it is lost forever?

The first in the series, 'Lost Island of Tamarind' received positive reviews from some prestigious sources including Financial Times, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus which called it "A smashing good read". The New York Times said: "Action-packed … The book's magic lies … in Aguiar's precise, often lyrical descriptions."

"The fact that it was picked up was really wonderful," Ms Aguiar recently told The Royal Gazette. But perhaps the most satisfying reviews come from her many young readers, both local and abroad.

"I am often asked now to speak at schools," said Ms Aguiar. "And kids in other countries often send letters to me through my publisher, or sometimes they find me on Facebook.

"I got a note from a kid in England saying she and her grandmother read the first book together. I liked that image of a little girl and her grandmother reading my book. Kids send really funny, imaginative letters. Often they sign them 'love'."

And Ms Aguiar can certainly identify with young people who have a passion for writing. Her own interest goes back to the first grade at Mount Saint Agnes Academy.

"My mother, (Gretchen) read to me a lot as a child, which I think is huge for a kid," said Ms Aguiar. "I always loved books, and loved reading. I remember being in the first grade and learning how to copy words from the blackboard onto those yellow pieces of paper with two solid blue lines and a dotted blue line in the middle.

"We were copying sentences laboriously from the chalk board onto the paper. The sentence was something like 'Spot Chased the Ball'.

"I copied that all the way to the bottom. Then suddenly something clicked and I realised that anything that came into my mind I could put on paper. So then I started to write 'the ball rolled down the hill and into the river. The boat picked it up'. I kept getting up and getting more sheets of paper. The teacher told me that other students need that paper too. I sat down, but I remember feeling euphoric.

"My favourite time all through primary school was any time when we were allowed to just free write. When I was young I use to start about 40 novels that I never finished before the age of 15. I had whole notebooks to the characters and the plot and [I would] write descriptions of the characters over and over again."

Ms Aguiar recently spoke to a creative writing class at the Centre for Talented Youth on Woodlands Road in Pembroke.

One student asked her: "I have a hundred stories I have started, but not finished. How can I make myself finish a story?"

Ms Aguiar thought finishing wasn't that important when it came to younger writers.

"I think it is enormously hard to start and finish any story," she said. "While I think that young people who want to write should keep pushing themselves to do more. It is like expecting to go in for your fifth piano lesson and play Rachmaninoff.

"The advice I would give to young writers is to keep writing and write whatever interests you. At that age it should be fun and pleasurable. As you keep practising you develop the muscle to carry it forward."

She is currently working on her third novel in the series. She looks at finishing the trilogy with excitement.

"I have been in this world of Tamarind for a few years now," she said. "It is a big project to sustain. It will be interesting to have my brain freed up for something completely new."

She said writing an adult novel next is not out of the question, but she doesn't find writing for young people to be limiting.

"I don't try to dumb the writing down at all," she said. "I think that (children's books) can have a lot of quality writing and sophistication of emotion. All the basic building blocks in any adult novel are there in a children's middle grade book."

'Secrets of Tamarind' is available at local bookstores, L.F. Wade International Airport and at Harrington Hundreds Grocery Store.