Natural disasters make headlines, as do their victims. Long after the reporters and television cameras have moved on to their next Big Story, the survivors are left to make sense of what happened. In such circumstances it would be natural to ask big questions about life. But, claims award-winning novelist Erica James, for victims of natural disasters, it isn’t the Big Event that turns their lives upside down, but the little things that ripple through every day, with devastating consequences.

This is the theme of her latest novel, It’s the Little Things. It is a theme she can claim personal knowledge of, because in 2004 she witnessed at first hand the tsunami that killed more than 225,000 people across the Indian Ocean. “It was very chilling,” she recalls. “It would be wonderful to say now that I dramatically changed my life as a result of surviving it, but I haven’t. There was a shaky period afterwards, but my life didn’t change dramatically.”

In It’s the Little Things Dan and Sally Oliver and their friend Chloe Hennessey are three years on from the disaster. Though it still has echoes – stay-at-home dad Dan continues to have nightmares about a little boy drowning, and Chloe is now single after obnoxious boyfriend Paul dumped her – life has returned to normal, on the surface at least. Chloe is working as a doctor and desperate for a baby and a husband; Dan has given up his job to look after the child he and Sally had after the tsunami; and Sally is proving herself as a divorce lawyer, sorting out the settlements of rich serial monogamists and grasping footballers’ wives in a successful Manchester practice.

But there are cracks beneath the surface – a terrible secret has left Chloe feeling guilty and lonely; a dangerous hankering after excitement in Sally threatens her entire life; and Dan’s outward calm and satisfaction hides fears of weakness and failure. These are circumstances found in many relationships. It does not take a tsunami to create them, but people can react to such disasters by making changes – however small – that their relationships are not strong enough to bear, as happens to Dan and Sally.

“When I mentioned to friends the premise of this novel when I first started writing it – that there is one couple who have a baby straight after surviving the tsunami, even though it is the last thing Sally wants – a friend of mine said that her neighbours did exactly the same,” Erica recalls. “My friend’s neighbours came back, having survived the tsunami, and went straight into having a baby, and since then things have gone very wrong for them.”

When I ask what fascinates her about the way small details have huge impact she answers: “I think with any writer it is the details that make the difference.” Erica cites her divorce as a case in point: if things had not been said or small things done, then maybe the marriage might have worked. The drama is in the detail of our lives. Further back, going to a school where expectations were what Erica describes as “horrendously low” spurred her on. “I remember as a teenager lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, thinking I want something better than this,” she recalls.

Erica has achieved more than “something better”. A regular on the bestseller lists, she has achieved a rare thing: being named Romantic Novelist of the Year – a prize for which she has been nominated several times – and gaining critical praise from the literary establishment. The romance of her stories does not overshadow the realism of her characters and the situations in which they find themselves.

Sally is a Marmite character, whom readers will love or loathe. Personally, I loved her chutzpah. “I would love to have the confidence and the ability that Sally has. I would love to be that person who just doesn’t give a damn,” agrees Erica. “I know there will be some readers who will hate Sally,” she adds. “I knew I was taking a risk with her, but I can empathise with her in that she is living this very safe life. She has it all going on and has achieved everything she has set out to and convinced herself that it is what she wants, but it all starts to fall apart and her true nature, which she has suppressed for so long, emerges.”

The book is set in north Cheshire, not far from where Erica lives. It is a world of rural villages, nouveau riche businessmen, old money and – famously – footballers’ wives. “Even though I have lived here for a long time, I still see myself as an outsider looking in, making observations,” she admits. Far from being worried about having a novelist famed for her razor-sharp insight into relationships living next door, Erica’s neighbours tease her about whether they will appear in her work. “One of my early books was set in the barn conversion where I live, and I have always threatened that I would write a sequel,” she says.

They need not get too excited yet, however. Erica’s next book is about a 31-year-old voice-over artiste who is always reinventing herself and a comedy scriptwriter who has had a spectacular fall from grace. Erica has been amazingly prescient in writing it. “I started writing this before Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand,” she laughs. A lighter novel than It’s the Little Things, the new work, provisionally titled The Queen of New Beginnings, will still have Erica’s trademark close observations. “Oh yes, there is a little bit of an undertone there,” she reveals, laughing.