Category: A Novel Adventure

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Who am I?

Inspired as always by some great Aussie authors, I decided to reposition myself (oh, that sounds a bit uncomfortable!)

I love tags like Bronwyn Parry and Helene Young’s: “Gripping romantic suspense in Australia’s wild places” and Fleur McDonald and Fiona Palmer’s “Heart-warming sagas of love and life on the land”.

So I thought…how can I capture the essence of my women’s fiction novels.
I came up with these which I kinda like.

Come home to the country with Aussie author Jenn J McLeod
or
Jenn J McLeod: Women’s fiction set in small towns on the edge of Austalia’s big country.
or
any variation of the above!

Then of course there’s the author pic. I was going to try kissing a horse like Mandy Magro’s picture (if you haven’t seen it, you’ll find this new Penguin author on face book. It’s a fantastic photo) but the last time I got that close to a horse I nearly lost my nose – yes it was a little sunburned and probably resembled a tasty carrot!) So no horse for me.

Oh, the things I do to get out of writing LOL

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As The Seekers used to sing….

“We’ll build a world of our own that only we can share…” (Oh, you’re probably too young to remember The Seekers!)

As writers we have to build worlds we can share with our readers, layering our manuscripts with info and images, sprinkling a little setting here, a few senses there.

For inspiration, I’m getting out, away from my desk and the imaginary characters and places I create, and into the real world. In other words, I’m doing lots of looking, listening, feeling, smelling and touching (oh la la!!). Seriously, it’s amazing what you notice when you focus on breaking down something as simple as a walk on the beach into touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell.

I also went to Ulmarra the other day. About an hour or so by car, it is a quintessential Aussie country town.

While my Calingarry Crossing is a fictional town, I drew a lot of inspiration from Ulmarra’s hotel (no come on, I mean inspiration from an architectural perspective!!) Even while drawing inspiration from an existing place, I think using a fictional town in your writing is much better than a real town. I recently started reading a novel but in chapter eight the author slams Coffs Harbour as both a place to live and visit.

Why do it? Why alienate readers when you can make up a town that is slightly north or south, give it cute name and get on with a story that keeps people interested?
I stopped reading.

So I’m sticking to building fictional worlds. Here are a few pics of Ulmarra.