Finally it’s here, the 1st May. Release Day! The Recruit has been fun to write and it’s been my own enjoyable escape. I love writing about Jaz, and wish I could be her. I hope readers try my new path, slightly different from a rural romance but none the less I’m sure you can still pick my voice/writing style.  (I’m still writitng Rural books too!! Don’t worry.) The Recruit is only in ebook form but I dream it will make print one day soon. 🙂 iTunes  Booktopia I made a trailer for it the other day also. 🙂 Hope you like it.         From one of Australia’s Queens of Romance comes the debut in a brand new YA series about secrets, strengths, and what lies beneath the surface. Jasmine Thomas may not be completely normal, but she’s a pretty typical seventeen-year-old girl. She hates the rich mean kids, loves her best friends,

Today I have a great friend of mine stopping by for a chat – actually I have thrown a heap of questions at her – about her new book Rocking Horse Hill. As always, Cathryn is a hoot, which is why her books are so entertaining. (I’m hoping to score a copy of Rocking Horse Hill for Mother’s Day. I’ve been dropping LOTS of hints to the kids!!) Here is the book and blurb. Ever since she was a little girl, Emily Wallace-Jones has loved Rocking Horse Hill. The beautiful family property is steeped in history. Everything important in Em’s life has happened there. And even though Em’s brother Digby has inherited the property, he has promised Em it will be her home for as long as she wishes. When Digby falls in love with sweet Felicity Townsend, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Em worries about the future. But she is determined

I’m coming out of my edit haze today to share a letter that I have from Loretta Hill. I’m a big fan of her FIFO series, they are full of laughter and characters I love, so I can’t wait to grab a copy of her new book ‘The Girl in the Yellow Vest’.  Read on to find out more….. Hi Fiona, How’s your corner of WA. It’s been a while since we caught up at conference last year.  Are you working on your next book now? When is it due out? (Hi Loretta! Yes, I’m busy on edits for The Sunnyvale Girls, which is a September release and also I’m working on something else which I can’t wait to share with everyone.) I’ve just started writing my next novel which has been a long time coming. This story has been sitting in me for at least four years and has had a lot of false starts. This

At the moment i’m waiting for my camera to be posted back to me, so until then I can’t put up any blogs of my south-west tour of WA. (Sorry…but have no fear i’ll be blogging a minute by minute blog of the whole trip!! Only jokes…wouldn’t want you all to fall asleep at the computer)  None the less i’m using my free time with the re-writing of book 3…AKA Sarah’s Journey. (working title…with my track record it probably wont stay. I can write a book but can’t pick a title lol) I finished my first draft of Sarah’s Journey in January, but after talks with my publisher Ali we have decided on some changes…some big and some small.  While I was doing my tour my mum came along to keep me company so I had help to plan out some new conflicts and themes for Sarah’s Journey. Spending lots of time travelling we had plenty of

This is my little area for writing. It used to be the desk with my sewing machines on it…but they have been put into ‘permanent’ storage!  Lets face it…I can’t sew to save myself…just a few running repairs is the best I can manage.  I usually park my butt in the chair, sometimes light a smelly candle and bung on some music. Although the music has to be in the background…if I have it too loud I end up getting lost in the song…and not my characters.  I have draws for ideas, my past books and future stories, RWA stuff in another and my current info next to my computer.  I have a diary of the year so I can plan out the books…need to have the seasons right.  Also water…if I don’t have water on hand I tend to get hungry and end up side tracked by food.  Writing isn’t the best job for

Being a big fan of rural/outback books, I, like many others, have Tony Parsons’ books in my bookshelves.  The Call of the High Country, Return to the High Country, Valley of the White Gold and Silver in the Sun.  I was talking with friends on facebook about what Tony was up to as we hadn’t heard from him in a while….surely a book must be close?  So I contacted Tony and we had a chat!  Firstly, I let him know I was also an author with Penguin and we had the same publisher and secondly – and most importantly- that I had all his books!! He was happy to chat with me and I was amazed to find out he would be turning 80 in a few months!!  So of course, being a fan, I asked him what he was working on.  Tony has just finished a 700 page book called “The Kelpie” his biggest

We meet family in Hopetoun over the weekend to celebrate our niece’s 1st birthday.  We arrived friday night to a mess as the caravan park had huge amounts of rain a few days before and our anix showed just how much.  Hmmm….a bit of cleaning was needed but thankfully we had it sorted quickly.  We had rain most of the first day…wish I could have brought some home with us as we still have a few farmers who haven’t done any seeding yet. No hair pulling and screaming going on yet but the stress is still there…and the question about wether to seed or not!  Come on mother nature…spare us a little bit! But our last two days were great.  This picture is where we fished one afternoon and we couldn’t have asked for a better day.  No wind!!  Amazing in Hopey.  And salmon was caught for tea.  *yes – my eating to walking ratio was blown out of

I wanted to share these couple of cartoons from the Connelly Cartoons book I have.  Brett Connelly has done a great job drawing moments from the bush and these two I particularly like. I can tell you how weird it is to be harvesting in the dry heat only for it to begin raining to the point headers are getting bogged.  Its a real scratch your head moment. And the other cartoon is at the sampling hut, which I write about in The Family Farm.  Now days they use automatic spears to get the sample but when I was a sampler, at the age of 17, I used to have to manually spear a truck, which meant climbing into the back trailer into the grain.  At the start of the year you can bet many farmers have a bit of trouble getting a sample through because of high moisture, due to green grains or the other