She visited Wanaka, Cromwell and Arrowtown to promote her latest book, Dolci di Love.
The book, which is her eighth novel, will be published in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Brazil and film rights are being negotiated for several countries. She has also had a book of short stories and a collection of magazine columns published.
For all that, Lynch is happiest when she's back in the South.
"I love it but it makes me a bit sad in the way that, just like people from Ireland, people from here always know that's where they're from. It's always a wrench to leave, but I love coming back."
Now living in Auckland, Lynch has family in Alexandra and is still a member of a book club she joined in Queenstown when she and her husband Mark lived there, which gives her plenty of reasons to visit.
"I try and get down several times a year. Any excuse really.
"My husband loves it as well. It's a bolt-hole for us."
After 20 years in journalism, she got her chance as a novelist after being fired from one job and made redundant from another. She had needed something where she was self-sustained.
Then her husband, an art director, received a job offer from the Lord of the Rings that guaranteed him a steady income while the films in the series were being made.
"It was a rare offer and it meant I could hit the road with him."
After the success of her first book, Finding Tom Connor, Lynch was able to get herself an agent in the United States and her career as a novelist developed from there.
It took a long time to write a novel, Lynch said, and she was never completely sure people were going to like what they read. However, she unashamedly tried to brighten people's lives with her work.
"Everybody needs cheering up and I try to do that by drawing people into a slightly exotic world that I have created."
