Archive for the Category »Guests «

Feb

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 5^th 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!

Category: Books, Giveaways, Guests 17 Comments

Jan

Guest Post: Sharyn Munro

Fleur

When Red Dust was on its way to being published, my nerves ran riot, I was unsure of the editing process and some days, things just got too much for me. I also had the deadline of Blue Skies hanging over my head and I was fairly sure that I wasn’t going to make it.

Enter Sharyn Munro! We met through our websites and Sharyn offered me straight, practical advice – most of which I took and my madness seem to retreat!

Sharyn and I have kept in contact and her life leaves me in awe. As a woman working in a man’s world, I understand how difficult it can be, but I have my husband to rely on if the generator won’t go or the header won’t start. Sharyn has only herself.

Living in a mudbrick, solar-powered hut, Sharyn has turned her mountain into a wildlife refuge, where even red-bellied black snakes are welcome – or at least relocated!

In her guest post, she tells you about her writing path to publication.

Sharyn will be popping back to answer any questions you might have – please ask! Or you can see her website - it’s worth a visit just to see her photos!

Photo by Brett Maguire

Growing up on a farm, any spare time from picking beans or packing tomatoes I spent indulging in the daydreamy pursuits of reading, writing or drawing.

From the time I was nine and allowed to go alone by bus to the town library, I have been hooked on books – and words, and the worlds they create.

My primary school teachers praised my compositions, but these would have been derivative pieces, with at least three adjectives per noun!

Much as I loved writing, it fell by the wayside as life dragged me through University, work, marriage, children – and divorce. After dozens of odd jobs, from teaching to selling spa baths, I had ended up writing copy for corporate newsletters and brochures; good training for precise and targeted language.

Otherwise, apart from sporadic jottings, my writing urges stayed buried until my children were grown up and I was back living in the bush. To be ready to accept turning 50, I made two vows on my 49th birthday: to stop dyeing my hair and to get serious about writing short stories.

For I love short stories; Alice Munro, Carol Shields and Jane Gardam write some of my favourites. Mine start with an observed or remembered scrap from real life; I imagine around it until the story takes flight into fiction – where to, I never know.

Treating writing as work, I revised my stories hard and often, cutting out all the purple prose bits that I secretly loved most, ensuring no bloopers of grammar or spelling or punctuation were lurking to baulk the reader and snap them out of the story.

I began sending stories off to competitions, and within two years little old grey-haired me had won a fairly major short story prize. There have been many since, including the Alan Marshall Award in 2002, a national prize that finally convinced me I was a proper writer.

I had also sent off a tongue-in-cheek contribution to the reader’s page of The Owner Builder magazine; they liked it so much they asked me to write for them – for money! Ten years later I still write articles about creative and persevering people who build their own homes, and still find it a privilege.

Yet I had no outlet for my jottings, funny or sad, about the animals and plants in my wildlife refuge, my struggles with sullen farm machinery, or my environmental concerns. After having many of these broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Bush Telegraph program, I approached Exisle, a non-fiction publisher, with the idea of a collection. They said only nature writers read nature writing; it had to have wider appeal.

So I devised a conversational, personal form of non-fiction, using selective memoir to weave the elements together. Exisle loved it and offered me a contract to write ‘The Woman on the Mountain’, which came out in 2007, causing me to be off the mountain more often, give many talks, and have a web site – which is how Fleur and I met.

Exisle then suggested a collection of tales about my wildlife neighbours for animal lovers to dip into; I illustrated them with black and white drawings, and so ‘Mountain Tails’ was born in 2009. An e-book on ‘Smart Shelter’ is almost out, and a collection of my stories is next, I hope.

Now, at 61, every day is potentially exciting because I may find time from chores like cutting firewood to sit at my Macbook and write.

It just shows that it’s never too late to reclaim dreams, to find that path you once knew well.

You can win a free copy of The Woman on the Mountain by Sharyn Munro!

Just comment on this blog post before Friday 5th of Februrary.

Category: Books, Guests, The Writer's Life 19 Comments

Jan

Guest Post: Lisa Heidke

Fleur

One of the greatest things about writing, is the people you meet. Lisa Heikde is a funny, warm, gorgeous person and a great writer, with really gifted insights into life and people. I met Lisa through Allen and Unwin – she’s published by the same imprint and an ‘pick up’ from A&U’s ‘Friday Pitch Day’, as I am and therefore we both share the wonderful, Louise Thurtell, as our publisher.

Lisa is a mum, wife and author. (I love seeing those three words together!) She also writes for Omigoddess, an online women magazine.

Lucy Springer gets even, was Lisa’s first book and has been published in Australia and England and given an 8/10 by the ‘Chicklit Club’. What Kate did next is her next novel and is available in all good bookstores now.

From Lisa’s website there you’ll be able to join her Facebook page and follow her on Twitter. Australia has some wonderful authors and Lisa is up there with the best of them.

Lisa will be popping back and forth to answer any of your questions or comments, if you’d like to leave a comment here.

GIVEAWAY!

Lisa will be giving away three copies of What Kate did next to three lucky people who comment here!

How and why did you start writing?

I wrote for ACP magazines for many years and when I left to have my third child, I decided it was ‘now or never’. I’d been talking for years about writing a novel so I sat down at the computer when Mia was a month old and started writing. I’d read several ‘how to’ books and decided I could write a Mills & Boon sweet romance. It was as simple as that!

Three months later I had written a 60,000 word sweet romance. The next week when I re-read it, I cried. It was dreadful. I kicked the cat, sulked and refused to wash my hair. But after my temper tantrum I decided that although I wanted to write a novel, I didn’t want to write a M & B. (Mainly because I couldn’t. Hats off to all my M & B friends because they are very hard to write well!)

How did you get your first publishing deal? (and how excited were you?)

I’d been sending partials (three chapters and a synopsis) to Australian publishers for more than a year when I heard that Allen & Unwin had instigated The Friday pitch where unpublished writers could email their first chapters. Within the week, the publisher had requested a complete manuscript.

The process of her reading and me rewriting bits took approximately five months and when I received a contract for Lucy Springer gets even I danced around the house and kissed the cat. It was a memorable moment.

I should point out that by the time I signed a contract, I had written three 85,000 manuscripts. I think it helped that I had a body of work to show.

Has it been a life-long dream to write, who are your inspirations, favourite authors and people you look up to?

My inspirations for storylines come from everyday conversations with friends, stories I see on the news and read in newspapers and magazines. I write contemporary fiction so my novels usually reference to pop culture and what’s going on in the wider community/world.

Marian Keyes is one of my favourite authors. When I read Watermelon, her first book, I thought it was fabulous and laugh out loud funny. I was interested to find out more about her life. Then when I read how difficult Keyes journey had been, I felt even more inspired and encouraged to write.

My philosophy is if you have the desire, you have to give it a go! I am so glad I didn’t give up because there were many times when I wanted to.

What Kate did Next is your second book, tell us about it, what was your inspiration behind it (and why it’s a brilliant summer read) and also tell us about Lucy Springer gets even.

What Kate did Next is about Kate Cavendish, a married mother of two, who rediscovers her passion for life amidst dealing with a distant husband, a rebellious thirteen-year-old daughter, a heavily pregnant and neurotic sister and parents who reunite after twenty years apart. Kate has a lot to deal with and her life quickly spirals out of control.

I wanted to create a snap shot of typical suburban life where the mother’s career has been sidelined in favour of keeping house and raising a family. Then ask the question: What happens when she wakes up one morning to discover that the dreams she had for herself at twenty, aren’t any closer to becoming a reality at the age of thirty-six? I wanted to write an essentially realistic but optimistic story. However, I felt there wasn’t enough mayhem so threw in a pregnant, neurotic sister and aging parents reuniting after many years apart.

A core theme centres on the sometimes difficult yet loving relationships between mothers, grandmothers, daughters and sisters. This theme is really at the heart of What Kate Did Next – Kate has an all-consuming love for her mum, sister and daughter, despite the heartbreak that such closeness brings.

I think it will be a popular summer read because it’s got a bit of everything: intrigue, drama, romance and humour.

My first novel, Lucy Springer Gets Even is about Lucy, an out of work actress and mother, who is living through a renovation nightmare when her husband suddenly takes off and she is forced to get her act and life together. I wanted to write a light hearted story in diary form about a woman whose husband leaves her, day one, sentence one. I thought it would be interesting to look at a woman in her mid-thirties with a couple of kids who thinks her life is moving happily along and rip it to shreds. I plotted Lucy’s journey from the depths of despair and bewilderment on day one to her getting her life together by day sixty-five.

What would a ‘writing day’ hold for you?

Generally, I write Monday to Friday during the school term. I don’t get a lot of writing done when the kids are around. After they’ve been packed off to school, I’ll check my emails and float around Facebook. (An addictive time waster! I’ve had to remove solitaire from my computer because I got too distracted.) After an hour of mucking around, I’ll settle down and start writing.

If I’m working on a new manuscript, I try to write about 2,000 words a day, five days a week to get the story moving ahead. I try not to think about spelling, tenses and grammar. My main objective is to write the story. Of course that changes once the first draft is written and I’m editing and re-writing.

On a typical day, I try to spend four productive hours at the computer. Often I can achieve it, but sometimes I’ll burn out at three and then catch up on reading or writing a blog on my website. I am still learning to be disciplined and consistent.

What’s next for you?

In November, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) an international writing competition where the aim was to write 50,000 words of brand new material. I did that and am thinking about developing the manuscript further to see where it takes me. The story is set in suburbia and it’s about the secrets people keep and the lies they tell. I am enjoying the process enormously.

That’s what is so great about being an author: I get to create real but flawed characters who often behave appallingly and say and do things I’d never dare to in real life. I have a lot of fun writing and thinking up plot twists and turns. It’s great seeing a story come together. I start with a blank page and think, ‘how am I going to fill this with 85,000 words?’ I love disappearing into a world of make believe. The possibilities…

Category: Guests 14 Comments

Nov

Guest: Marianne Delacourt

Fleur

We are really lucky to have Marianne Delacourt on the Guest Blog, today! She started out writing fantasy, then dabbled with some chapters about a ‘kick-arse’, feisty crime fighter, with an ability to read peoples auras! Loving the characters from the Tara Sharp series so much, she kept writing about them, as well has her speculative fiction books.

Marianne uses the social-blogging network, Facebook, to keep her characters in touch with all of their fans. Tara Sharp has her own page, as does her science fiction character Parrish Plessis, and often blogs about small mysteries and mishaps she has during the week. You’ll often find laugh-out-loud conversations between to the two! Marianne’s thoughts behind this is that:

‘It’s a long time between books. I like Tara, and I’d like to have her around in my life regularly, the way I enjoy catching up with the characters in my favourite TV series every night. I hope you’ll feel the same way.’ (excerpt taken from Marianne Delacourt’s website.)

Today, Marianne talks about writing different genre’s and how to be successful at it.

Her second Tara Sharp book is due out in September 2010 and she will be around to answer any questions you have, if you’d like to leave a comment here.

Hi Fleur fans,

I thought I’d chat to you about switching genres. I’ve been writing and publishing science fiction for five years (and 5 books!) now. Though I love working in that genre, I had a hankering to write something light and contemporary and sleuthy. Probably because my writing world was filled with such tortured characters and mind-bending ideas.

In my spare time (hah!), I started flirting with a new character. I wrote a couple of chapters and found that I was enjoying my flaky private eye and her cast of hilarious friends so much, that I couldn’t stop. It became as addictive as the SF. So I guess, switching genres for me has been like changing clothes – just something you do. I put it down to my very eclectic reading tastes. I grew up on a weird mixture of pulp novels and literary fiction, and I appreciate both equally.

The main thing, if you’re considering doing this yourself, is to make sure you read widely. I don’t believe that any writer can do a genre justice if they aren’t aware what has come before them, and what the customs and idiosyncrasies are for that readership. If you wrote a science fiction novel assuming that you were only person who’s ever written about faster-than-light travel, then you’d be laughed outta town.

On the other hand, I don’t believe a writer should be limited creatively – as long as they approach each project with the same excitement and passion.

Good luck!

Marianne Delacourt (aka de Pierres) www.tarasharp.com www.mariannedepierres.com

Parrish Plessis and Tara Sharp

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Category: Books, Guests, Internet 3 Comments

Nov

End of year giveaway!

Fleur

Well, it’s nearly Christmas time and that means the time for giving!

I’ve got five signed copies of Red Dust to give away. They’d make great Chrissie presents, or just presents in general, so if you ‘enter here’ by the 4th of December, I’ll contact you to let you know you’ve won! All international guests are welcome, as well as local!

This is the first of a few giveaways – I’m going to try and do something every couple of months! There’ll be copies of Blue Skies coming soon and packages of both books and books from the guest bloggers! So keep an eye on the site!

Comment here: in 25 words and less answer this question

Tell us who deserves a copy of Red Dust and why for their/your summer reading!

Category: Books, Guests 25 Comments

Nov

Guest Blog: Tamara McKinley

Fleur

I grew up with Tamara McKinley’s books on my shelves. I love her complex plots, the way she weaves a web, so interwoven, and the end is breath taking. She completely transports me to another time and place.

When I approached her about doing a guest blog, I really didn’t expect to hear back from such a successful and critically acclaimed, international author, but was so wonderfully surprised when I received her email – now that’s a story in it’s self!

There is something about modern technology – I was sitting in the middle of a 250ha paddock, in a tractor, as the sun was going down waiting for Anthony to call me over so I could take a load of grain to the silo… and my phone beeps. ‘You’ve got an email’! So, dutifully, I checked my emails… and it was from Tamara McKinley!

Tamara is the author of thirteen books – the latest three, a stunning trilogy, tracing families history over three generations. She also has another book due out next year. http://tamaramckinley.com/ or http://tamaramckinley.blogspot.com/

Tamara McKinley:

‘As for me, my inspiration is Australia and all that vast, amazing country has to offer. There are thousands of books written about America, the wild west, the Indians, the white settlements and the thirst for gold – but Australia’s history has all that and more, and I simply love exploring it and learn so much with each book.

I began my career twenty years ago, and have been published for fifteen years, with thirteen books under my belt and a fourteenth due out next year. Matilda’s Last Waltz was my first Australian historical family saga, and it was the book that began my successful career.

My other inspiration is my family’s history. I was raised by my grandmother, and her three very English sisters. So I could read, write, do small crosswords and put together poetry before I went to school – sounds fantastic, doesn’t it – but they gave me my love for words and books and let my imagination free. I will always be grateful to them.

I live in England now, but visit my son in Buderim, Queensland very often, and also go down to Tassy where I was born and raised. I’m lucky, my writing has given me so much, not least of all the pleasure of knowing that for the length of one of my books, I can take the reader into a very different world.’

Category: Guests Leave a Comment

Nov

Guest post: Bronwyn Parry

Fleur

As a reader, I’m always really interested to read interviews of my favourite authors. I like to know what inspires them to write, why they write, how they write, how they learn and keep getting better at what they do.

As a writer, the same applies. Writing is hard, it’s lonely and sometimes things just don’t come together, but when it does and the words flow quickly, it’s the most awesome reward.

So, asking a few authors to write about their experiences, is another way to learn how to better myself, as well as being interesting (I hope) to you.

This one of the reasons, this week is the start of a new section on my blog, ‘Guest Posts’. I hope you’ll find it as interesting as I do, reading about how and why authors start writing and what fires them to keep writing.

Bronwyn Parry is my first guest. She is the author of two books – As Darkness Falls and Dark Country, with a third book due out in September 2010. Her genre is romantic suspense.

Bronwyn is happy to answer any questions you might have, so please leave a comment, if you would like her to respond. Her website is www.bronwynparry.com

Thank you, Fleur, for inviting me to write about why I write, how I do, and my inspiration.

I always imagined I’d be a writer one day. Growing up, I read everything I could get my hands on, so my world was full of fascinating characters, each with their stories. And when the pages of a book ended, those characters often stayed alive for me, and I’d keep wondering ‘what happened next?’ In the absence of sequels, I had to imagine the answers myself – and that led to the other question, the question that I think drives many writers: What if…?

However, having a sensible, responsible side as well as the imaginative, dreamy side, I did all the Sensible Things first – a job, a career, and higher education. I played a little with writing, even wrote three chapters of a book, but it was purely for my own entertainment. And then one day I took a long hard look at my managerial job and decided that I didn’t want to do that for another 25 years, and that if I was going to try to be an author, that I’d better get serious about actually, you know, writing.

I didn’t set out to write gritty romantic suspense, but those were the story ideas that came to me. My first published novel, As Darkness Falls, was born in a short, vivid dream I had one morning: a policewoman, out somewhere in the bush, facing a mob of people she knew, people who were after a suspect for a terrible crime, and she was asking them to trust her and the police to find the truth. I woke up, still gripped in the emotion of it, and the questions of who she was, and what happened next, made me start writing. That scene inspired the prologue of As Darkness Falls. And having written the prologue, I then explored the next question: What if…? What if that policewoman was called back to investigate another similar crime, in her old home town?

My second novel, Dark Country, is loosely linked to As Darkness Falls, and is set in the same fictional town of Dungirri. The heroine in Dark Country was a secondary character in As Darkness Falls: a strong, dedicated, down-to-earth police sergeant who deserved her own story. I didn’t have any inspirational dreams for that novel – instead, the question that inspired it was: What kind of man would she never expect to fall for? The answer – an ex-con with Mafia connections, hated by the town, accused of murder – oh, there were definitely story possibilities there!

As to how I write, I write best at night, when it’s dark outside, and silent except for the frogs and the insects chattering away. My stories have crimes in them, but for me they start with the characters. While I draft some scenes out of sequence and jot down ideas, I mostly write in a linear fashion, beginning to end, and need to have each scene fairly solid before I move on. Writing is darned hard work for me; weaving together a plot, developing characters, keeping it flowing, and logical, and yet engaging the readers’ emotions – there are many days I tear my hair out! And yet it’s also one of the best jobs in the world; I get to create fascinating characters, explore interesting questions and themes, write about the Australian landscape, and in addition to that, I get to meet readers and other writers and talk about books. What could be better than that?

Category: Books, Guests 13 Comments

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