Mar
14

Well next Saturday is the Condingup Community Fair, aka the Condy Fair!

It’s always such a fantastic day – we have a hard working committee that makes sure that it goes off without a hitch and that there are many exciting and fun things happening.

Because the fair is held to raise money for our local school there is a huge focus on kids and families, which makes the day even more special.

This year there’s all the regulars like the Apex train, show bags, Doopa Dog, and a merry-go-round, but there is a new display! Amberland Inflatable is coming – it’s a monster of a blow-up castle! It has slides, tunnels and all sorts of things the kids will love.

The Town band is coming to serenade us, along with a Fashion Parade, by Shajo and Sass n Shique and of course, the very popular Dog High jump – as you can see from these photos, Doopa really hasn’t got much change of getting over!

The Vegie competition, that was held for the first time, last year, has caused a rivalry between many families and not to be missed.

The bar will be open in the afternoon and we are also very lucky to have Vince Garreffa – ‘The Prince of Flesh’ celebrity butcher, coming down from Perth! He’ll be demonstrating how to get specialty cuts of lamb and hold a sausage making workshop!

Of course, I’ll be there, launching Blue Skies – there is a couple of signings. One at 12:00 – 12:30pm and then again from 2:00 – 2:30pm, with a short talk at 1:45pm.

We are really hoping to see many of you at our fair.

On a house-keeping note – the winners need to be announced! Now as Nyssa said, we had a couple of mishaps with some disappearing comments, but they have all been recovered and Rochelle pulled two names out of the cake tin – we thought we’d give away two because it went on for longer than we planned! So, Carol and Rebecca are the winners of the Blue Skies giveaway and Maree is the winner of Helene Young’s Border Watch.

I’ll be giving another copy of Blue Skies this week when I’m blogging over at Lisa Heike’s blog! Will let you know when that’s on!

Can’t wait to meet a few of you at the fair this year!

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Mar
11

Every year our community holds a community fair to raise money for the local school. We have a huge amount of businesses and exhibitors that come from Esperance, as well as races and fun events for all the family.

Condingup is about 65km east of Esperance -  a small drive but for a fantastic day, full of fun and a focus on families, it’s well worth the trip. And I’m launching Blue Skies at the fair this year… so hopefully that might make it worth the trip as well!

Check out the flyer for all the details…

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Mar
03

Meet Cal. She’s the brains behind Blue Skies.

When we first started talking about what the next book would hold, we came up with a few ideas.

1. Cal’s house is very old (it was actually the first double-brick home built on farming land in Esperance) and is steeped in history. I can’t remember the year, but she had a flood come though her house in the late 60’s that damaged her floor boards. That got us thinking about floods.

2. We were both set on the idea of twins.

3. There had to be a death! (We’re rather obsessed, Cal and I, with forensic science and bodies!)

4. We are both really interested in history – Cal in particular loves both family and Australian/English history. (Actually, any history!)

I tried to start writing but nothing was sitting right with me. We had planned out chapters, but it wasn’t coming together. I actually almost gave up and decided that it was a fluke I had got a book published and I couldn’t write anything, ever again!

After months of tearing my hair out, things finally began to click. But only after Cal had driven an eight hour drive to her sister’s place and spent the whole time planning a new direction for Amanda. She wasn’t going anywhere in her present form! When she got back from her holiday, we had numerious phone calls, lunches and emails and finally it began to take shape.

With Cal’s tough love: (“Get off the phone and start writing,”) she drew up a family tree for a family that didn’t exist to get the time lines right and right at the end, when I had about a month to go before my deadline, we sat down over lunch one day and planned the last ten chapters.

Blue Skies is as much her story, as it is mine.

My other friend, Gill, was also a huge reason that the book got finished!

Cal and I were pretty happy, last Friday, when we got to catch up and see our work finally finished and in book form.


To win a copy of Blue Skies, can you tell me what Amanda’s horrible job was at the dam? (Answer is in the first two chapters, which are available for download on the right.)

I’ll draw the winner on Sunday night and yes, I post anywhere in the world!

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Feb
28

I have really met some lovely people through my few short years in the writing world. The three women, who are involved in our new initiative Facebook Page (Australian Outback mysteries and romances, and Twitter @outbackromances) are some of them!

Today, you get to meet Hélène Young, who is part of this group.

Hélène’s first book, Border Watch, is on sale as we speak/read! It’s the first of a two book “Border’s” series and has all things I love in a book – crime, mystery, intrigue and a love story, as the cherry on the cake! I get goose-bumps just thinking about it!

But not only is she a passionate writer, she is a pilot (which, growing up in a flying family, I think is wonderful!) It’s something slightly ‘out of the norm’, and as a woman in a mostly-man’s world, I believe is a great thing.

I am so excited to have Hélène here today. Her launch is on the 5th of March at Glaskins Gallery, Trinity Beach, Queensland. This will be a wonderful celebration of another of Australia’s outstanding talents.

Congratulations, Hélène and thanks for blogging with me.

Hélène: Thanks for inviting me to your blog, Fleur. It’s great to be here and I love being part of the new combined Face Book page with you, Fiona Palmer and Bron Parry.

The four of us write very different stories yet the Australian landscape has a big presence in all of them. That started me wondering about what triggers each of us to pursue a story and its characters.

Border Watch started from three different events. In 1999 a rusty little fishing boat landed at Holloways Beach, just north of Cairns, with 26 illegal immigrants on board. The government agencies responsible for border security had no idea they’d got that far south until they tried to catch a taxi.  In 2003 a man tragically drowned attempting to rescue his son and was washed up on a beach near where I live. Walking my dog early in the morning, I found his body. A couple of years later, the airline I worked for employed a number of pilots who’d flown for Coast Watch, the coastal surveillance operation in Australia. Their stories were awesome! From there Border Watch percolated, bubbled, fermented and eventually took shape – the possibilities were endless!

How did Red Dust start out for you, Fleur?

Fleur: The idea for Red Dust really just appeared one day, after my mentor told me he thought I had the talent to write a book. In between changing nappies and sleep deprivation, the idea just grew to what it is now! Thanks for asking!

Hélène: The colours of North Queensland had the biggest impact on me when we moved to Cairns. I was used to the crystal clear waves of the Gold Coast where the water is deep blue and green. In the north, the ocean is cerulean, azure, opalescent and sapphire – I’d never seen anything so clear, so vibrant, so breathtaking. One of the early flights I did was from Cairns to Lizard Island in a Twin Otter. On a clear day we flew at one thousand feet over the Ribbon Reefs. You could see gigantic coral bommies rising out of the depths to peep through the silvery reflection of the Coral Sea. Manta rays and sharks made dark shadows in the sandy shallows.  Bright white beaches drew solid demarcation lines between the sea and the dark, dark green of the coastal rainforests. (And to my horror, time-poor tourists slept as we flew over this, exhausted from the long haul flights to Australia… I was tempted to induce some turbulence to wake them up…)

Colours are strong in your books too aren’t they, Fleur? It’s there in the titles – Red, Blue and Purple. Where do they come from?

Fleur: The colours are from the landscape and just seem to jump out at me, speak to me! I have to use them to show people that don’t live here how wonderful our country is. I would have tried to hit a huge air pocket to wake those tourists, how terrible they didn’t get to the aerial view!

Hélène: The other dimension to Border Watch is the people. ‘Laconic, laid back, stoic’ is the way Morgan describes them. Until you live in remote or regional Australia it’s easy to forget how demanding our climate can be. For North Queensland, the challenges of ‘The Wet Season’ are immense. When the monsoon trough descends from the equator it can bring deluges of biblical proportions. Rainfall is measured in millimeters and one hundred mls a day can be a normal occurrence. That’s around three inches on the imperial scale and is a whole lot of water! If you get four days of that, you’ve had a foot of rain and that has to go somewhere in a hurry. Bit of a bummer if you live at the foot of a hill (and we do!) as you’ll get the neighbour’s foot of rain as well as your own. Apparently Zeus (the demented staffie) has a wet bed today after the heavens opened last night… The locals take all this in their stride, roll up their pants,  pop open their umbrellas and just get on with it!

The rhythm of speech is slower in the north. People tend to end their sentences with an upwards inflection.  They take their time answering a question, weighing the words more carefully. It doesn’t make them slower, less articulate, just more measured. Yet they give friendship readily. We’d barely moved into our house before our neighbour had invited us to a BBQ. Twelve and a half years on, he’s still a friend as are the people we met over a couple of crispy sausages!

So what gives you inspiration to write a story? Is it a character, a scene, a place or a concept. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment and go into the draw for a copy of Border Watch – and yes we do post anywhere in the world!!

Border Watch, March 2010, Hachette Australia – A contemporary suspense novel set in North Queensland.

“When terrorists penetrate deep into Northern Australia, the only things standing between them and a successful attack is feisty Border Watch captain, Morgan Pentland, and aloof Customs agent, Rafe Daniels. Both Morgan and Rafe will have to overcome their own personal animosity if they’re to prevent carnage on Australian soil.”

www.heleneyoung.com

Hélène, thanks so much for being here today – I wish you every success with Border Watch and am waiting with bated breath for Tuesday’s mail when my copy should be arriving!

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Feb
27

Well today I’ve drawn the first of our new initiative – ‘Giveaways for both Readers and Writers!

The winners are: Readers – Narrelle and Writers – Anita!

Congratulations to you both. I hope that you enjoy your prizes. Narrelle wanted to win Liar by Justine Larbalestier. There is a wonderful review of it here and it’s on my reading list for this month as well.

The next section is open from March to April, with the winners being drawn on the 30th of April and announced on the 1st of May! Thanks to all those who submitted to both writers and readers giveaways, you’re still eligible to win the next lot (except Narelle and Anita, since they already won!).

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Category: Books  2 Comments
Feb
27

I have an opportunity to offer you guys a pre-release copy of Blue Skies! Our local bookshop, Le Grand bookshop, has secured 200 copies before Blue Skies is due out. Now these are for a couple of events.

First one is that the Blue Skies Launch will be held at the Condingup Community Fair on the 20th of March. I’ll be having a chat in hall with the MC of the day and then signing books. So we’d love to see out at Condy. The fair is a family orientated day and the main aim of it is to raise money for our local school, so it’s geared towards children and familles.

The second reason is that people outside of Esperance don’t miss out! If you ring Joy at Le Grand bookshop, give her your credit card details and who you would like either Red Dust or Blue Skies made out to, I’ll head in once a week (mostly on a Friday) sign them and take them to the post office! This offer is open for all year, so if you miss out on the first lot of copies there will be more opportunities to grab a signed copy!

Also, I’m giving away of copy of Blue Skies , every week leading up to April. I’ll be all over the place offering giveaways, but the first one will be on here. Good luck and I hope you’re as excited about the release of Blue Skies as I am!

I’m also guest blogging at Inkyblots about how I juggle my life! I’d love it if you could pop over and say hi and leave a comment!

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Feb
22

Yesterday we had a heap of cows in the yards. We were preg-testing and giving them their booster needles.

On the way back to the paddock with them I stopped at a line of trees, interested in why the bark was falling off one of them. It didn’t seem to be sick in anyway.

I was intrigued by the colour and pattern under the bark. So this funny photo of the tree trunk, looking towards the sky!

Many of these trees are over fifty years old and were planted along fence lines to mark boundaries and to offer shelter for stock. Sugar Gums and Tuarts (the main ones that have been planted) often lose their limbs in big winds and as annoying that can be, if they fall on a fence, they make lovely fire wood in winter!

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Feb
16

Our cows are pretty clued in and knows what happens on our farm, almost before we do!

They are an indication of what’s happening with the weather. If they are camped up, sitting as far away from the south as they can with their backs in that direction, you can guess there is going to be a change from the south. If they’re out eating before dawn, it’s an indication that the day might be hot. There’s lots of little things that you learn to notice.

If we start the tractor up, the girls know it’s feed time. They’ll wait at the gate until it’s their turn. I open the gates and drive in and they follow – never trying to go out of the paddock – just following the hay.

Before I’m out of the tractor, they’re trying to eat it! They completely ignore me while I’m cutting the net-wrap off and putting in the pins so I can roll it out! That’s something I love – them not taking any notice of me!

There are times I can reach out and pat these huge, ‘wild’ animals, in the paddock and she just usually regards me quietly, while chewing on a mouthful of hay.

Love my girls!

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Feb
14

Summer has taken its toll of a lot of the people and animals this year. I’m sure ours hasn’t been has hot as the top half of Australia, but it’s been a stinker compared to what we are used to. Our hottest day was 48 degrees.

We had about six catastrophic fire dangers issued and the sea breeze, which is usually a certain in Esperance, has been quite non-existent! When I first moved here we would use a doona every night, but not this year. The fan has become a permanent fixture in our room.

Last Saturday there were quite a few thunderstorms around. I sat outside and watched the lightening hit the ground while Anthony was in his ute with the fire cart hooked on, waiting and watching. It was only a matter of time.

The long, hot, dry six months has made the bush tinder dry. The feed in the paddocks is a sun-bleached white, we have dry dams for the third year in a row and we’re feeding hay to the cattle every second day. It’s time consuming and, after a while, disheartening. After two very dry years, we are hoping this year is going a really wet one.

The fire that started in the bush near the coast burnt for a week and the farmers, along with FESA, were put on a roster-system to keep an eye on it. The graders and dozers worked overtime, pushing fire breaks around the edge of the bush to protect the farming land, while the fire-fighters back burnt trying to make it safe.

The fire that was to the north of us is still burning, a week later.

As you can see from this photo, there is still a fair bit of smoke hanging around, which has done nothing except help increase the washing in my laundry because I can’t hang it out! Anthony’s clothes, three washes later, still have a smoky smell to them!

We have a bushfire radio in house, and listening to that over the past week has been like listening to a movie you couldn’t see. The urgency behind the voices, the directions – I could picture these guys doing what they needed to do.

The professionalism of all our volunteer fire-fighters is amazing and they are all to be commended and thanked from the bottoms of our hearts.

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Feb
11

The Big Book Club are giving you the chance to win a signed copy of Red Dust – just head to their Facebook for the details.

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