Robyn's Strictly Temporary Winners!

I've had an incredibly busy couple of days so apologies for not replying to yesterday's comments.

To help make up for my absence, I have not one but FIVE winners!

Catherine, Maybelle, Laney4, Daisyrose and BN100!

Please contact me at robyn.grady.author (at) gmail.com with your postal address and I'll organise for a book to be sent out.

Whether I do, or weather I don't.

by Robyn Grady

One of the most rewarding parts about putting a story together is making sure research is sound. Facts need to be true and correct. At the same time there’s always an element of poetic license that comes into play.

Many readers’ favorite towns are fictitious. Bonus? The author doesn’t need to worry over whether, for instance, a character can actually take a connecting bus from this street to that road, or what a realistic temperature might be at a given time of year. We writers pay attention to those things. J

When I began sketching out my latest Billionaires and Babies book, I wanted it set in Colorado. I’d done some research and had big plans for a snowstorm as well as an interesting forced proximity premise. I knuckled down, fleshing out characters and making sure motivation was right. Plot points were hashed out, too. Even had the ending in mind. Then the scheduled date for release was shifted to a month that didn’t particularly work with snowstorm season.

Time to get inventive!

What about a freak snowstorm? Weather all around the world has been severely off whack. Here on the east coast of Australia we’d been gripped of drought for many years. These last couple of seasons, however, have seen unprecedented floods and even snowfall where there’d been no recorded evidence before. Older folk are shaking their heads. What’s the world coming to...

There’s a saying in publishing: It’s all in the execution!

So I lifted my chin and decided that research and facts would join hands with anomalies and conjecture. And I got to write my scary snowstorm. My characters get stranded alone together and –

Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens next.

To be in the draw to win an advance copy of Strictly Temporary, just leave a comment. Have you ever been stuck because of freakish conditions? Or maybe your neck of the woods has been affected by the weirdest weather lately. I watched Day After Tomorrow again the other night. Hopefully it won’t get that bad - at least not in our lifetime. 

In The Footsteps of....

by Sharon Archer

In the footsteps of ... lots and lots and LOTS of real-life heroes and heroines!

We're on the road in Outback Australia at the moment and soaking up the hugeness of the country, the red soil, the vast skies, the enormous distances. I'm loving reading about the people who came here and did amazing things... but today I want to share something else....  I'm following in the footsteps of the heroines of the Lucy Walker novels that I so adored when I was a teenager living in New Zealand.  Australia and the Outback seemed an exotic, faraway place!

I can't name any of the novels now but I'll never forget the enjoyment they brought me, the thrill of escaping homework and teenage-angst to immerse myself in the Outback, the taciturn heroes - so tall and handsome and capable, the huge stations, and the courageous young heroines, so far out of their comfort zones, who carved a place for their future.

For some reason, it's the names of the rivers that have really stayed with me - the Murrumbidgee, the Darling.  Tonight we're camped at Bourke in Outback New South Wales on the banks of the Darling River!

So, from the photos we've taken so far, I'm going to take you on a little tour of some of the things that a Lucy-Walker heroine might have seen...

The wide open spaces...

Huge dams for watering stock... and perhaps a nice dip on a hot summer day...

A misty morning, ghostly gums and a rich red road....

A wash out on a creek line exposing roots sunk deep in the soil...

A full moon in a billabong...

Maybe the hero would have brewed her a billy tea... though I'm sure he'd have settled his billy on the fire much better than I did!  Looks ready to tip over, don't you think!

I took lots of these pictures at a magic little place we discovered near Nymagee, NSW - Four Corners Farm Stay.  We arrived for one night and, loved it so much, we ended up staying for two weeks!

So how about you... have you explored places you'd read about in a book?  Are there places you've read about that you'd particularly like to explore?

A Green Thumb? Not Exactly . . .

By Helen Lacey

It’s a fairly long running joke in my family that I was blessed with a brown thumb. Basically, plants wither and perish while under my care . . . or lack thereof. I’m not the person to leave that precious maidenhair fern with while you go on holiday.  Or the relative you rely on to water your house plants while you’re away. That said, about a year ago my hubby and I had to section off a small part of the yard so that the electricity man could read the meter without being set upon by the Smiling Assassin (AKA my ten year old Tenterfield Terrier, Missy) He barely salvaged a trouser leg the first time he came into the yard, so we quickly built the fence to avoid seeing a grown man cry for the second time.

I then came up with the brilliant idea of having a vegetable patch in this space. My husband looked sceptical and did that one raised brow thing. I mentioned that we had plenty of horse manure and was sure it would become a resounding success. He wasn't convinced, but I finally talked him around with the promise to take extra special care of this new venture. A couple of old laundry tubs, plus two specially made corrugated iron garden beds later and I was in business. Or not. The seedlings went in. Row after row. Tomatoes, beans, lettuce, beetroot, and some sacrificial herbs (Named so because I’ve had several attempts at growing and cultivating these and have failed quite spectacularly each time). And I waited. And watered. And waited some more. The thing is, I’m not all that good at the waiting thing and found when there was little action happening, I forgot my promise and quickly began to neglect my new garden. The soil dried up, the promise of beans and beetroot faded and a couple of months later it was overgrown and full of weeds. I got the obligatory I told you so, and hung my head in shame. 

Months went by and I forgot about my plans to grow my own vegetables and herbs. Until my father-in-law arrived for a visit. Before he retired he was a nurseryman and when I fleetingly mentioned that I really needed to get my garden up and running again he took it upon himself to make it so. He started early one morning, churning the beds, added manure that had been in bags for months and which he insisted was gloriously good compost. And then we ventured out to purchase some seedlings. More beans, beetroot, tomatoes and lettuce . . . and basil, mint, parsley and chives. Back home, the soil was toiled again (not by me, I watched from an upstairs window) and the tiny seedlings were planted. He worked his green thumbed magic, added things to the soil and presto, months later my garden is a miracle of nature. I had promised said father-in-law I would not let the garden perish and so far things are looking good. I’ve been picking tomatoes and lettuce and using the herbs daily.

And what fun it has been. So, maybe the thumbs aren’t quite green yet . . . I'm still learning. But there is a definite improvement in their shade of brown.  So I applaud all the gardeners and green thumbs out there. Growing things and then eating them . . . who knew how satisfying it could be?

Sunday Smooch from Secrets & Speed Dating!

Welcome to another LoveCats DownUnder Sunday Smooch!


Today we have a smooch from Secrets & Speed Dating by Leah Ashton, but first ...

the winner of last week's Sunday Smooch Giveaway is -- Marybelle!


Congratulations, Marybelle! Can you please contact Louise Cusack at

mail (at) louisecusack (dot) com and she'll send you an eBook copy of Destiny of the Light.

And now for today's Sunday Smooch from Secrets & Speed Dating by Leah Ashton...

Trying to move on from a disastrous engagement, Sophie Morgan needs a date for her best friend's wedding—and fast! And what quicker way to find a man than speed dating? Only it's bar manager Dan Halliday who catches Sophie's eye.


Dan can't resist helping a damsel in distress, so he offers her a deal—a few shifts in the bar in exchange for the date—no strings attached. But when pretence leads to passion, they both get more than they bargained for. And it's too late to have any secrets between them….

Set up: Sophie and Dan have been pretending to be a couple, but Sophie has just run out of a party after the"first dance" song she intended to dance to with her ex-fiance at her wedding is played.

Sophie leant against the trunk of a jacaranda, watching them walk up the stairs and then the fly screen slam behind them.

            She’d hadn’t even had her bag – or her car keys – where exactly had she thought she was going?

            Away.

            But that, of course, was the problem. The emptiness inside her couldn’t be escaped, the inability to start her getaway vehicle notwithstanding.

            Even her project plan couldn’t fix it. So what if she’d decided to tell every prospective boyfriend that she was infertile? What would that achieve, really?

            It’d just accelerate the inevitable. Disappointment.

            Meaningless words meant to reassure.

            Then, rejection. Always, rejection.

            Even her relationships before Rick, before her boyfriends had hit an age where children were high on their to do lists, had always been temporary. There had always been an unspoken, underlying understanding that she was not the woman men chose to settle down with. She’d known it. And then Rick had made her believe that she’d had it all wrong, and she’d revelled in what she now knew was a lie.

            The type of man she wanted, the man who’d propose marriage and a home and a life together – why would he want her?

            Dan – a man who was the antithesis of the man she wanted – walked back towards her, empty esky bouncing against his leg. She drank him in as he walked, back lit by the light on Emma’s front porch.

            Broad shoulders, lean hips, long legs.

            And he wanted her. Suddenly the fact that he came with an expiry date didn’t matter.  The pull – the connection – between them, was so strong that resisting him already felt like a battle she would never win. So why resist? Why not stop all her over thinking and justifications and sensible decisions, and just let go? Give into this unfamiliar, spectacular spark and let herself experience what her body so badly wanted? What she so badly wanted? And what now felt like the most natural, most perfect, most necessary thing in the world?

            Then in three weeks he’d be gone and she’d never need to tell him she was broken inside.

            She met his eyes, pouring all the pain, and frustration and need she felt into her gaze. He stopped dead, his grip on the esky’s handle failing and it fell onto the grass with a thud. And then, without a word, he walked to where she stood, still propped against the tree. Her bag landed at her feet and his hands pressed flat against the jacaranda’s trunk on either side of face.

            His eyes hadn’t shifted from hers, but she could see the question in his gaze.

            She swallowed. “This isn’t about my project plan, or you trying to make me more spontaneous or something, okay? This isn’t me saying ‘the word’ or whatever you called it.”

            He nodded.

            “This is about me wanting you.” His eyes glinted in the moonlight. “And you wanting...me.”

            It took everything she had to not look away, or to blush. But she managed it, keeping their gazes locked together as he leant towards her, right up until she felt his breath hot against her lips. A split second before his mouth covered hers, her eyes slid shut.

            And then he kissed her. No preliminaries this time, just demanding, determined and sure. The touch of his tongue made her shiver and sent her hands from her sides to his waist.

            She was deliciously hemmed in with his palms still flat against the bark, so without the option of threading her hands into his hair like before, this time she made do with exploring the shape of his back.

            But it was far from a hardship to run her fingers along his muscular ridges and planes through his shirt or to drag her nails down his spine, halting only when her fingers hit the leather of his belt.

            He kissed her expertly, passionately and voraciously, like she was something special, and like
he couldn’t get enough of her. 

To be in the draw to win a copy of Secrets & Speed Dating, tell me about a time you've decided not to run away from something? (or someone!)


Come back next Sunday, when the winner of today's giveaway will be announced -- and a smooch from Waking Up in the Wrong Bed by Natalie Anderson will be posted!

You never forget your... second!

By Leah Ashton

Today is the release day in the UK for my second book, A Girl Less Ordinary! 

Hooray! This is especially exciting for me, as while writing this book (and subsequently re-writing it) there were many, many times where it didn't seem possible that it would ever make it to this day. Yes - I had the dreaded second book blues.

As an unpublished writer, I always assumed that with publication came this magical, unmovable confidence and knowledge. If I was published, then I had made it, and therefore writing book after book would surely be effortless.

Ah. Not so much :) Turns out, that I still have lots to learn, and so as I wrote this book I was swamped by doubt, and frustration, and certainly that little voice in my head that wondered (loudly!) if the first book had all been a fluke. Especially when the book required a complete re-write - only 8000 words of the originally subbed version made it to the finished book (all those wasted words!).

But - it's not so bad. I learnt more from this book than my first. I learnt that I do have more than one story inside me, and that I can take a huge step back from my writing and look at it with fresh eyes. I learnt that no matter how dire the first draft may appear, I can still end up with a book that I love, and that I am so, so proud of. I love this book, and I'm thrilled that it's now available for people to read!

I know I'm not the only author to suffer from the second book blues, and I've also heard of athletes that take a temporary dip in their second professional season after a successful debut. 

Is there anything in your life that got harder the second time round? I'd love to know I'm not alone :)

Relationships - The True Story

Romance novels are sometimes accused of showing an unrealistic view of love and relationships, but I disagree. 

Here's what I know about relationships: 

They're not easy.

Every relationship goes through rough patches, when it takes hard work and commitment to get to the good parts again.

They're worth it.

A good relationship brings joy, companionship, intimacy and support.

No two relationships are alike.

Every relationship travels its own path. Some are a slow burn that work up to intensity, others are intense from the first time the couple meet. Some have big highs and lows, others are more stable. Every person is an individual (cue scene from Life of Brian, "Yes, we're all individuals,") so every relationship will unfold in its own way.

This I've learned from my own experience and from watching the experience of others close to me.

 

And it's what the couples in a romance novel also experience. They don't have plain sailing - they have to work hard for their happy ending. Face challenges, make mistakes, keep going, prove they deserve the love and commitment of the other person.

I think there are worse life lessons one could learn.

(I've seen a few wise words about relationships on Facebook recently, so I'm pasting a few here for you.)

So tell me, what do have you learned about relationships? Together we could expand out my list of 3 above.