Blog – Page 12 – Jenn J McLeod – small-town storyteller

Posted on 18/11/201611/12/2016 by Jenn J McLeod — 4 Comments

Author Rachael Johns – a letter to my 17 y.o self

Dear Rach

I know you’re heartbroken right now, but don’t waste your time or money (on tissues) crying over that boy you accidentally dumped. You’ve already spent four years lusting after him and that is far too long to be chasing a boy who to be blatantly honest… is just not that into you. More fool him! But don’t worry, one day you’ll appear on breakfast TV show, Sunrise, and thank him for breaking your heart. That heartbreak is the reason you start writing in a couple of months and although you don’t know it now, writing is your calling. It’s what you were born to do.

BUT, I recommend NOT transferring from a primary school teaching degree to a writing degree. If you don’t want to do teaching anymore, take some time out and get some life experience or do another degree that you’ll actually be able to use in the big bad world. I suggest library studies, women studies or criminology – basically anything but that writing degree because it is an absolute waste of time. You don’t learn anything except that you do not want to write poetry or literary fiction.

You know how you love Bridget Jones Diary? That’s the type of book you want to write. Don’t be ashamed of it. Read as much as you can get your hands on. Try an odd romance as well – I think you’ll find you love them. Oh and while you’re at it, join an organization called Romance Writers of Australia – it might save you a lot of time and you might end up taking less than fifteen years to get published.

But don’t obsess about writing – just enjoy it. You’ll put in the hard yards and you’ll get there eventually. In the meantime, read more and don’t be such a prude. Date more boys, have fun and don’t stress so much about your body. You are NOT fat and starving yourself isn’t cool!

Soon you’ll go to England and meet your dad and your half-siblings for the first time. It will be both wonderful and heart-wrenching. Try to spend a little more time with your older sister – life takes her much sooner than it should and you’ll regret not getting to know her better.

Oh and stop dreaming up lots of lovely girls’ names for future daughters – there are only boys to come!

See you in the future.

Love your older self! xox

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rachael Johns is an English teacher by trade, a mum 24/7, a chronic arachnophobic, and a writer the rest of the time. She rarely sleeps and never irons. Jilted (her first rural romance) won Favourite Australian Contemporary Romance in 2012 and she was voted in the Top Ten of Booktopia’s Favourite Australian Author poll in 2013. The Patterson Girls won the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award and also the 2015 Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction. She lives in the Perth Hills with her hyperactive husband, three mostly-gorgeous heroes-in-training, two fat cats, a cantankerous bird and a very badly behaved dog.

Rachael loves to hear from readers and can be contacted via her website – www.rachaeljohns.com You can find Rachael on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/RachaelJohnsRomance/) and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/RachaelJohns)

Latest book – THE ART OF KEEPING SECRETS – Grab your copy now!

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To see the list of authors taking part in this letter-writing blog series: CLICK

Wanting to honour the lost art of letter writing through this blog series, I also opened my fourth novel with a character writing a letter. And not just any letter. It’s a story — perhaps the most important he’ll ever tell.

The Other Side of the Season

Life is simple on top of the mountain for David, Matthew and Tilly until the winter of 1979 when tragedy strikes, starting a chain reaction that will ruin lives for years to come. Those who can, escape the Greenhill banana plantation on the outskirts of Coffs Harbour. One stays—trapped for the next thirty years on the mountain and haunted by memories and lost dreams. That is until the arrival of a curious young woman, named Sidney, whose love of family shows everyone the truth can heal, what’s wrong can be righted, the lost can be found, and . . . there’s another side to every story.

BUY now from Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, or

Posted on 14/11/201601/05/2017 by Jenn J McLeod — 3 Comments

Crying in Cawarral

Dark glasses were needed!

Yes, there were tears, both happy and sad when we hugged our house-sitting host goodbye last month. We spent six fabulous weeks in Cawarral, which is somewhere in the middle of Rockhampton and Yeppoon on the Queensland Capricornia Coast. (You might recall I set a story in the same region after staying on a cattle property last year.)

Yes, we are officially house-sitters and care-taking our way around the country by looking after vacant houses, maintaining properties and gardens, and feeding and loving animals while their humans head off on holidays. We did up a website, printed some business cards, and the requests started coming in and if our first sit in Cawarral is anything to go by, this roving life just got better.

Check out the pictures: the view from our van was stunning, the company cute, and the experiences were the type you tick off the bucket list — the highlight for sure was being midwives to Lacey the Appaloosa mare (check out the video below).

Of course the birth had to happen just after midnight, with Michelle banging on the caravan door: “Come on, girls, we’re having a baby.” So we chucked on long pants and shirts and fought off mozzies that were bigger than a Black Hawk helicopter, while keeping nosy stable mates at bay and taking really bad video recordings. We soon realised the birth was not going to plan, but Michelle took charge and there was a happy ending. His name is Barney, and if you would like to work your way through some very dark and badly done recording (it does get better when we needed it to) you too can witness the miracle of birth.

Best of all, we have made friends for life in Michelle and John (and Paddy – the award-winning Palomino, Clancy – who thinks he’s a dog, and Wilbur with the wonderful eyes. Coco, who is actually a dog, was also the perfect puppy therapy). Missing you all in Cawarral, but there are new communities to get to know. Next stop — Bairnsdale, Victoria. We hope to back in Cawarral for Christmas next year. Barney will probably be with a new family by then, but we got word recently another bub is on the way, so he or she will be a few months old by then. Can’t wait.

Thank you Michelle and John for your friendship.

Peek-a-boo Paddy

Not a bad view

Just because they inspire me

Sonya’s cute dog is based on Coco-licious. Only she’s not a Cav!

Michelle and the musketeers.

Barney – still working out how these legs work.

Stable mates: Paddy, Clancy, Wilbur and Lacey

A week old

Cool dude with John Tate’s horse, Paddy

https://youtu.be/IXWSLKQXJ_0

Posted on 31/10/201631/10/2016 by Jenn J McLeod — 2 Comments

Author, Nicole Alexander, writes a letter to her 29 y.o. self

To 29 year-old Nicole,

I’m on the precipice of making a life altering decision without even knowing it. Having just arrived back in Sydney after working in Singapore for three years, I’m excited. I’m grateful for my ex-pat experiences but super pleased to be back in Australia. I’ve been offered a marketing role with the National Trust. It sounds like a really good position in an area I’ve always had a huge interest in, Australian history and genealogy. And I love Sydney. It’s a buzzy place and I have lots of friends here and some family. It seems like a new beginning and I’m ready for it. The only regret I have is that it’s not the bush where I grew up.

Two weeks before I’m due to commence work, the telephone rings. It’s my father. We talk about the bush and our properties, the earliest of which were settled by my great-grandfather in 1893. When dad asks if I’ve ever thought about coming to home to be involved in the family business, instead of being custodian of someone else’s history, I’m already back there in big sky country.

It’s a rash decision, but I’m packing up my Paddington terrace and shipping my belongings 810 kilometres northwards. My Sydney based sister is like, what the ….. . My friends in shock. My mother, worried about my coming home to live in an isolated environment after eight years in big cities.

If I hadn’t been so keen to go home to the station I may well have given a little more thought to what I was letting myself into. Forget MacKellar’s ‘droughts and flooding rains’, the outback isn’t that romantic. It’s tough and it’s hard for a young inexperienced woman to fit in when you’re working with a team of men, even if you are the boss’s daughter. If I’d known then that I’d have to carve a place for myself on the property, that I would eventually learn how to do everything, that it was necessary to do these things to earn respect, both from my co-workers and for my own sense of achievement, that there was a large gender bias towards women working in the field, that I would end up managing such a huge business, that I would fall off bikes, be smashed against yards by cattle… well, I probably would have said no.

But I didn’t know, and in not knowing I seized the opportunity and have never regretted it…. Except when I’ve been in pain!

Good for me

With love and Panadol, from my much older and wiser self! nx

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nicole Alexander is a part-time grazier and author. Her 7^th novel, River Run is out now.

Website: http://www.nicolealexander.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNicoleAlexander

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To see the list of authors taking part in this letter-writing blog series: CLICK

Wanting to honour the lost art of letter writing through this blog series, I also opened my fourth novel with a character writing a letter. And not just any letter. It’s a story — perhaps the most important he’ll ever tell.