Meet my Character

On November 6, 2014November 6, 2014 By heathergarsideIn heroes, romance, rural romance2 Comments

I was tagged by the lovely Jennie Jones to participate in the Meet my Character blog hop. Thank you Jennie!

Born and brought up in Wales, Jennie Jones loved anything with a romantic element from an early age. At eighteen, she went to drama school in London then spent a number of years performing in British theatres, becoming someone else two hours, eight performances a week.

Jennie wrote her first romance story at the age of twenty five whilst ‘resting’ (a theatrical term for ‘out of work’). She wrote a western. But nobody wanted it. Before she got discouraged a musical theatre job came up and Jennie put writing to one side.

She now lives in Western Australia, a five minute walk to the beach that she loves to look at but hardly ever goes to – too much sand. Jennie returned to writing four years ago. She says writing keeps her artistic nature dancing and her imagination bubbling. Like acting, she can’t envisage a day when it will ever get boring.

Her latest book is 12 Days at Silver Bells House, now available for pre-order. Visit Jennie’s site here.

Now I want to introduce one of my characters from Breakaway Creek.

1.) What is the name of your character? Alex Baxter

2.) Is he a fictional or a historic person? Entirely a figment of my imagination!

3.) When and where is the story set? It is a dual timeline story set in both the present day and the 1890s, on a cattle property in Central Queensland. Alex is my hero from the 1890s.

4.) What should we know about him? Alex was adopted by the Baxter family and always believed himself to be their cousin who was orphaned at birth. Then, one day, he uncovers a shocking secret…

5.) What is the main conflict? What messes up his life? Alex falls in love with Emma, who is visiting his adoptive brother and sister-in-law. She feels the same way, but before they can marry, Alex knows he must tell her the truth about his ancestry.

6.) What is the personal goal of the character? Alex must learn to trust and forgive before he can hope to find the happiness he craves with Emma.

7.) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

This is the blurb for Breakaway Creek:

Two city women, a century apart, find love and adventure in the Queensland outback.

Betrayed by her boyfriend, Shelley Blake escapes the city on a quest to unravel a century-old family mystery. Her search takes her to a remote cattle station run by Luke Sherman. Shelley and Luke try to resist their mutual attraction as he fights to reclaim his children from a broken marriage, and Shelley uncovers the truth about her ancestors, Alex and Emma.

Emma’s story of racial bigotry and a love that transcends all obstacles unfolds in the pioneering days of the 1890s. Shelley and Emma are separated by time but they’re bound by a dark secret to a place called Breakaway Creek.

8.) When can we expect the book to be published or when was it published?

It was published last year and is available from Clan Destine Press, Amazon, Kobo and iTunes.

Now I would like to tag two other authors who both write fabulous romantic suspense with rural settings.

The first is fellow Clan Destine Press author, Sandi Wallace.

Sandi is a crime writing personal trainer. Her debut novel Tell Me Why was released in September 2014 and is the first book in her new Rural Crime Files series.

Tell Me Why is set mainly in Daylesford, part of Victoria’s spa district, and combines thriller and police procedural with a touch of romance. The sequel is already in-house with her publisher.

Sandi has been shortlisted in the 2014 Scarlet Stiletto Awards with results to be announced at the gala dinner on Friday 21 November. She won the ‘Best Investigative Prize’ in the 2013 Scarlet Stiletto Awards and has been a finalist in other short story competitions. She also regularly contributes articles on health and other topics.

Sandi has devoured crime fiction in film and print since an early age. For equally as long, she’s wanted to be a crime writer – although she still wonders if she could’ve been a police detective and writer. She is currently polishing the third book in her series, and plans to start the fourth in the new year. Sandi lives in the beautiful Melbourne hills with her hubby and furry family. Her new release is Tell Me Why.

To purchase Tell Me Why, visit Sandi’s site here.

Next is Sandy Curtis, another Clan Destine Press author whom I have known for a number of years and who has been kind enough to share a room with me at several RWA conferences.

Sandy Curtis’s first five novels were published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and Bastei Luebbe in Germany. They were nominees in the Ned Kelly Crime Awards, and two were finalists in the mainstream section of the Romantic Book of the Year Award. They are all now available as e-books from Clan Destine Press. Her sixth thriller, Fatal Flaw, and seventh, Grievous Harm, are published by Clan Destine Press in print and as e-books.

Sandy was a magazine feature article writer for two years, a newspaper columnist, and has had short stories and serials published in leading Australian women’s magazines. She was a member of the Management Committee of the Queensland Writers Centre for four years and has organised WriteFest, the Bundaberg writers festival, since its inception in 2005. In December 2012 she was presented with the Johnno Award by the Queensland Writers Centre for her “outstanding contribution to writing in Queensland”.

Her new release is Grievous Harm.

To find out how to buy her books, visit Sandy’s site here.

Interview with Jane Carter

On May 1, 2014May 1, 2014 By heathergarsideIn romance, rural romance, Uncategorized3 Comments

New rural romance author Jane Carter was going to participate in a recent blog hop, then realised she wasn’t ready. I said I would post something of hers once her book was released. So here it is:

Q1 – What am I working on?

1. High Country Secrets is set in the Monaro. Strong, grazing country, bald smooth hills and in the distance, the craggy outlines of the Snowy Mountain Range. There must be something in the air of the Monaro. The animals have constitution and the people are tough and resilient.

Jessie is from an old grazing family. Michael d’Larghi is an entrepreneur- into farming and transport and various family businesses. His grandfather came out from Italy in the fifties to work on the Snowy Hydro Scheme.

Jessie returns home to introduce her new fiancé, Alan, to the family. But the first person she meets is Michael, who she remembers from primary school days…..

There is an open feel to the high country – like you’re standing on top of the world. Jessie and Michael just have to reach out and grab what they want. But secrets from the past are crowding in. Everyone these days has baggage – but how much can you take?

Q2 – How does my work differ from others in the genre?

I live in regional New South Wales, in the south. That is quite different from Queensland or the outback. Goulburn is as different to Roma as the west of Scotland is to Bath.

No matter where they come from, country people share an understated calm and strength, a trust in each other, a practical outlook. Whether this comes from handling animals or the effect of the peaceful landscape on you, I don’t know. I do know I enjoy the feeling of space and not the crush of people around you. I felt a need to write about the country and the people I have come to love and know. So part of the difference is the area I write about. The other difference is experience – forty years in trucking and farming. This experience means my perspective is different than others writing in the same genre.

q3 – Why do I write what I write

I don’t know why I write what I write. It just pours out and I have very little say in it really. I am continually surprised by what I write. Sometimes my characters just take off and I go along for the ride. I find that is the secret. Once your characters are up and running they dictate what happens next.

Q4 – How does my writing process work?

A writing process is not exactly the phrase I would use to describe how I write. Noise. I like the television blaring. I can write with telephone conversations going on around me and mayhem. Possibly my editor would say that explains a lot. But I’ve always been a multi-tasker.

Writing also takes you to places you’ve never been to before. So you just have to trust in the magic carpet and go along for the ride. I’m a pantser, so my ride is more rocky than most.

How can you be in love with one man and violently attracted to another?

When Jessie Cranfield and Michael D’Larghi take the stage to sing together at a local fundraiser in their hometown, the last thing Jessie expects is the electricity between them. Not only has she not seen Michael for years but her fiance is sitting in the audience.
Michael is used to overcoming any obstacle in his path to achieve his goals. Now his goal is Jessie, the former girl-next-door from rural Cooma.
But not even Michael can foresee that their attraction might uncover family secrets that could tear both their lives apart forever.
A Montague-Capulet war has nothing on the Cranfields and D’Larghis. Can Jessie and Michael risk falling in love, or is it too much for their families to bear?

Buy it now, for only $4.99.
http://momentummoonlight.com/books/high-country-secrets/

Jane Carter lives in Goulburn, NSW with her husband Richard. Raising five children, farming and helping to run a livestock transport business kept her busy until a few years ago when the last of the children left home and she started writing. Daughter of journalist, author and film maker Lionel Hudson this is perhaps not quite so surprising. She worked in films and television, before she was married. Forty years in the country has made her passionate about rural Australia and the people who make it unique. She enjoys her garden, particularly after rain, adores her grandchildren and anything at all to do with boats.

http://www.janecarterauthor.com/

Writing the Dual Timeline

On March 9, 2014May 14, 2017 By heathergarsideIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have always been attracted to idea of someone unearthing secrets from the past. This premise was one of the original inspirations behind Breakaway Creek. When I first began writing it, which was some time ago, I had read only a few books written on a dual time-line. Some had brief sections harking back to an earlier period and one I can recall was written predominately in the historical era.

Since publishing Breakaway Creek, I’ve read several books by Kimberley Freeman which are excellent examples of the dual timeline. I love reading historicals, both romance and mainstream, but the more serious novels in this genre can be heavy and/or confronting. Intertwining the edgier historical setting with a familiar modern one, takes us back to our comfort zone and gives us space to draw breath.

Recently there have been a few releases of this type in the rural romance genre, so it must be growing more popular.

I have always loved writing historical stories with my earlier books, The Cornstalk and A Hidden Legacy, set in the 1870s and 1890s. Breakaway Creek devotes almost equal time to both the present and the historical sections of the story. For me, it is a way of combining my fascination with Australia’s pioneering days with a contemporary story which deals with present-day issues and which is more accessible to many readers. Although I am too fond of modern comforts to want to live in Victorian times, the horse and buggy era lends itself to adventure and to social dilemmas that don’t exist today. In Breakaway Creek the heroine from the 1890s, Emma, falls in love with someone of mixed race. What happens next would be most unlikely to occur today in Australian cultures.

My ancestors on both sides of my family were pioneers in Central Queensland and listening to my parents’ stories about them and ‘the good old days’ sparked my interest in history. Combine that with my love of romance and my childhood on a 47,000 acre cattle station and it is no wonder horses, cattle and rural life in general play a large part in my stories.

Having found a format that works for me, I am writing my next novel in two timelines. Like Breakaway Creek, it will combine romance with adventure, a touch of suspense and family secrets.

Blurb for Breakaway Creek:

Two city women, a century apart, find love and adventure in the Queensland outback.

Betrayed by her boyfriend, Shelley Blake escapes the city on a quest to unravel a century-old family mystery. Her search takes her to a remote cattle station run by Luke Sherman.

Shelley and Luke try to resist their mutual attraction as he fights to reclaim his children from a broken marriage, and Shelley uncovers the truth about her ancestors, Alex and Emma.

Emma’s story of racial bigotry and a love that transcends all obstacles unfolds in the pioneering days of the 1890s.

Shelley and Emma are separated by time but they’re bound by a dark secret to a place called Breakaway Creek.

Buy Links:

http://clandestinepress.com.au/content/breakaway-creek

http://www.amazon.com/Breakaway-Creek-ebook/dp/B00D43BUI6/ref=cm_rdp_product

http://www.bookworld.com.au/book/breakaway-creek/41962064/

http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Breakaway-Creek-Heather-Garside/9780987553805

Who’s Tagging Whom?

On March 2, 2014May 1, 2014 By heathergarsideIn romance, rural romance11 Comments

I was tagged by romantic suspense author Sandy Curtis to participate in this blog. Sandy and I are are fellow Central Queenslanders (although to me the Bundaberg area is more like southern Queensland) and I first got to know her when she came to Emerald to present a workshop with the Queensland Writers Centre. Since then we have been occasional room-mates at RWA conferences.

Sandy Curtis is the author of six romantic suspense thrillers published in Australia and Germany. Her novels have been shortlisted in the Ned Kelly Crime Awards, and two have been finalists in the mainstream section of the Romantic Book of the Year Award run by the Romance Writers of Australia. She has won awards for her short stories, written a weekly newspaper column and monthly magazine feature articles, and organises WriteFest, the annual Bundaberg writers’ festival. Her seventh book, Grievous Harm, will be published by Clan Destine Press in late 2014 and she is currently writing her second women’s fiction novel.

www.sandycurtis.com

And now I will attempt to answer the four questions:

Q1 What am I working on?

I’m writing another rural romance/dual timeline story, presently titled Morrison’s Road.

Holly Colter leaves her career in nursing to help her grandparents on their Queensland cattle property. But she hasn’t bargained on Jesse Kavanagh, the boy who broke her heart and ended up in trouble with the law, being back next door.

While doing her best to avoid Jesse and encouraged by her grandfather, she tries to uncover the truth about a murdered ancestor.

Mercy Forbes is shocked but hardly grief-stricken when she finds her abusive husband murdered. Sergeant Jake Morrison is determined to find the killer, despite his suspicions about Mercy and a growing attraction between them that threatens to undermine the case and his career.

Q2 How does my work differ from others in the genre?

The dual timeline sets my two latest novels apart from most others in the genre. Although this technique has been used in other rural romances, most are predominately set in the present day and rely on diary entries or similar to tell the historical story. Breakaway Creek and Morrison’s Road are two complete stories in one, interwoven together. They combine adventure and romance with a touch of suspense.

Q3 Why do I write what I write?

I grew up in an isolated environment on my parents’ cattle station and have a deep love of rural life and the Australian bush. I have written off and on since childhood and I’m never happier than when I’m living in my characters’ heads and my writing is flowing!

Q4 How does my writing process work?

Now that I have a publisher waiting for my next book, I’m finding it much easier to stay focused. I try to do my chores first thing and then write for a couple of hours, depending on what’s happening that day. It is impossible for me to always stick to a routine with farm life, my job at the local library, and volunteer work intervening.

Although I write a rough outline first, I am more of a pantser than a plotter, finding the best ideas always come to me as the story evolves.

Now I would like to tag Beverley Eikli.

Beverley Eikli is the author of eight historical romances.

She has worked as a journalist, magazine editor, a safari lodge manager in the Okavango, and an airborne geophysical survey operator on contracts around the world.

Beverley wrote her first romance at seventeen, but drowning her heroine on the last page was symptomatic of the problems she grappled with during her 23-year journey towards publication.

Recently she received her third nomination from Australian Romance Readers for Favourite Historical Romance with her suspenseful Napoleonic espionage Romance The Reluctant Bride.

Beverley teaches in the Department of Professional Writing & Editing at Victoria University, Melbourne. She also teaches Short Courses for the Centre of Adult Education and Macedon Ranges Further Education.

Beverley writes under the name Beverley Oakley for more sensual stories.

You can visit her website at: www.beverleyeikli.com and her blog at: http:www.beverleyeikli.blogspot.com.au

My second author is Leisl Leighton.

Leisl is a tall red head with an overly large imagination. As a child, she identified strongly with Anne of Green Gables. A voracious reader and a born performer, it came as no surprise to anyone when she did a double major in English Literature and Drama for her BA, then went on to a career as an actor, singer and dancer, as well as script writer, stage manager and musical director for cabaret and theatre restaurants (one of which she co-owned and ran for six years).

After starting a family Leisl stopped performing and instead, began writing the stories that had been plaguing her dreams. Leisl’s stories have won and placed in many competitions in Australia and the US, including the STALI, Golden Opportunities, Heart of the West, Linda Howard Award of Excellence, Touch of Magic and many others.

Leisl lives in the leafy suburbs of Melbourne with her two beautiful boys, lovely hubby, overly spunky dog, Buffy, and likes to spend time with family and friends. She sometimes sings in a choir and works as a swim teacher in her day-to-day job. Her novels, Killing Me Softly (romantic suspense) and Dark Moon (paranormal romance) are out now with Penguin’s Destiny Romance.

You can catch up with Leisl at:

www.leislleighton.com, Facebook, Goodreads and on Twitter @LeislLeighton

Dark Moon is due out on March 15th.

The third author I have tagged is Dean J. Anderson.

I see exceptional within the everyday; I write because it is who I am.

Dean J Anderson began his professional writing career in 2008.

Living with his wife and son on the Central Queensland coast in Australia, Dean draws inspiration from striking local landscapes and everyday people. His transformation from avid reader to author is ongoing and one that has seen him come alive within the realms of Dark Urban Fantasy.

Dark Urban Fantasy is not a genre he set out to choose; he says it chose him.

Visit his website at www.deanjanderson.com.au

The Charming Hero Blog Hop

On August 3, 2013August 27, 2013 By heathergarsideIn charming heroes, heroes, romance, rural romance8 Comments

Welcome to the Charming Hero Blog Hop!

Join me and a group of fellow authors as we tantalise you with the charms of our handsome heroes.

If you would like to win an ebook copy of Breakaway Creek (ePub or Mobi format) all you have to do is tell me my handsome hero’s name.

– What’s your hero’s name and where does he come from?

Luke Sherman lives on a cattle property in the Central Highlands area of Queensland.
– What’s your charming hero’s profession?

He’s a grazier and is equally at home on a horse, motor bike or tractor .
– Now, there’s a lot about our heroes that sets all women in a flutter. What’s your hero’s greatest weapon when it comes to seduction?

The wicked glint in his green eyes.
– If your hero resembled one or more celebrities, who would they be? (provide pictures, he could be a blend)

A young Kevin Costner.
– Apart from being incredibly charming, how would you describe your hero’s personality?

He’s responsible, a great father, a hard worker, and has strong family values. He has a good sense of humour and has a caring, considerate manner.
– Post a scene of ten lines or less that captures your hero using his charm to win over both our readers and heroine.

You were screaming! Did you have a bad dream?’ He ran a caressing hand over her hair. ‘You’re shaking.’

She nodded, hardly able to frame the words. ‘It was awful.’

‘Don’t worry, you’re safe now. I’ll stay awhile if you like.’ He squeezed her tight.

She nodded again and clutched at him as if he were her only chance for salvation.

‘It was Bevan,’ she mumbled, shuddering. ‘I keep remembering the knife.’

‘I’m so sorry, Shelley.’ He flicked the light switch and pushed the door closed then reached for a chair and sat down. He pulled her onto his lap. ‘You’ve been through hell, all because of me.’

To read more, you can purchase my rural romance Breakaway Creek from Clan Destine Press, Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Lulu and Nook. The print version will be available any day now.

To read about more charming heroes, go to our Facebook page (click on the button below).

Heather Garside

Tag: rural romance