Special Guest Star: Fiona Lowe!

Today, I have a special guest - the ever-fabulous Fiona Lowe!

You might know Fiona from her Medical romances, but she has a new book out in August (though available for presale now in some places) and she's here to give us a sneak peek. So, first, a bit about our guest:

Fiona Lowe is an award-winning, multi-published author of romance fiction with Harlequin Mills & Boon and Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or the USA, they all feature small towns with big hearts, and warm, likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she’s not writing stories, she’s a weekend wife, a mother of two boys and she’s trying really hard to instill in them heroic characteristics like cooking and ironing. A previous Romantic Book of the Year finalist, Fiona is an avid reader, a guardian of 80 rose bushes, attempts to stay fit and is often seen collapsed on the couch with a glass of wine.

Welcome, Fiona! Firstly, here at the LoveCats, we're always interested in the number of cats in your house. Or dogs, or horses or chickens. So tell us about the non-humans in your life.

Sadly, we are cat-less at the moment but the boys are keen to get a kitten soon and recently they spent an entire day coming up with crazy names for the ‘yet-to-be-seen’ cat. We’ve always had black and white cats, you know the Bustopher Jones type cat with white spats. We’ve also had pet rats. Now before you faint, I must tell you that children take you to places you never expected to go and I cheerfully admit they turned out to be the BEST pets and I was quite fond of them.

You usually write Medical romances for Mills and Boon, but Boomerang Bride is different. How did this book evolve?

When I sold my first Mills & Boon Medical romance someone *kindly* said, ‘when are you going to write a big book?’ In 2005, I couldn’t imagine writing any other type of book and the thought brought me out in a cold sweat. In 2008, sitting on a ski-lift at Mt Hotham and an image popped into my head that wouldn’t go away. It was the image of a bride in a wedding dress holding a cake and staring into a vacant storefront. There was no story attached to it, and I found myself asking, “Why is she doing that?” “How did she get there?” A month later I heard The Waif’s song, ‘Bridal Train’ and suddenly I had the perfect reason for why Matilda was standing where she was, a very long way from home.

Tell us something about your hero Marc that he wouldn’t want us to know.

Marc is a very successful New York City architect and he’s won awards for his designs. His current project should be making his brain pop with possibilities. Only it isn’t. He’s not ready to call it a career slump, but it’s got him worried. There’s no way he’d ever admit that though, not in a million years.

Your heroine is an Australian who travels to the US. How did you find writing about the town she lives in?

I used to live in Wisconsin so creating Hobin wasn’t hard. I drew on all the things I loved about small town USA and put them into the town. By the end, I wished it was a real town so I could live there!

So what’s Boomerang Bride about?

Matilda Geoffrey risked it all for love. She left Australia to be with Barry—the man who had swept her off her virtual feet. Now, wearing a wedding dress, she's alone on Main Street in small-town Wisconsin, and things aren't working out exactly as planned...

In town for his annual family visit, Marc Olsen had never seen a bride quite like Matilda—staring into a storefront window, holding a tottering wedding cake, and looking desperately in need of a groom. He may not have any warm feelings for his hometown, but meeting Matilda just as she discovers she's been scammed by her online "fiancé" stirs something in him.

Matilda is not the kind of woman Marc imagined himself with, and Marc is anything but the romantic hero that Matilda has always dreamed of. But as unlikely circumstances throw them together, can they let go of their misconceptions and risk their hearts for love?

What was the last fabulous book you read? (We're always looking for the names of new books!)

The last romance I read was Yours To Keep by Shannon Stacey and I smiled all the way through it. I’m currently reading The Hare with the Amber Eyes which is a family biography about the Ephrussi art collection. It’s fascinating!

Tell us something about you that might surprise us.

I listen to French lessons on my ipod at the gym. I desperately want to be fluent in another language but the perfectionist in me makes it impossible to for me to open my mouth. Sadly, I think I will go to my grave able to read the language but not speak it.

Thanks, Fiona! Boomerang Bride is published by Carina Press and is available for pre-order right now and will be released on August 8th. It’s an electronic book and can be purchased at Carina Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and lots of other online book stores! New to eBooks? Click here for more information.You can find her at her website, her blog, confused on Twitter and a bit more together on Facebook.

To help celebrate Boomerang Bride's release, tell us the last time you got lost. And if it involves a shopfront window and a wedding cake, I'll be very impressed!