Category: Promote & Publish

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A Guessing Game, A Book To Win, A Blog To Hop

While many, many people have inspired me in some weird and wonderful ways over the years, there is a group of Australian authors who have definitely influenced my writing.

Call it cocky, quirky or crazy, I used to amuse my ‘unpublished’ self by writing an author into each novel, never imagining:

a) I would be published and

b) the author – with title – would escape an editors red pen.

Guess what? I AM published (soon) and the author’s name DID stay in the final version of House for all Seasons, out March 1. (Pre-order here).

But which author gets a mention?

HINT: It can’t be Lisa Heidke and Bronwyn Parry as I have already included them in novels yet to be published — like this.

From The Simmering Season (coming 2014)

Maggie refused to get up before she’d read at least three chapters of her latest Lisa Heidke novel. The author had a knack of portraying motherhood and the every day, showing real woman struggling to balance work, family and dreams, just like Maggie. Only in fiction there was a guarantee of happy ever after.

Bronwyn Parry features in one of my favourite (and earliest) works – which means it may never see the light of day!)

From MOSAIC…

Throwing open the flap on her knapsack, Gina took a quick inventory: denim shorts; a black, cheesecloth top; beach towel; the super, scrunch-it-up-all-you-like jacket she’d owned for years; her new digital camera and the latest Bronwyn Parry novel.

So… are you a smartie? Can you correctly guess which author made it into House For All Seasons?

Any one who leaves a correct guess on this post today (Thursday 24-01-13) will automatically get one extra entry in my Australia Day Blog Hop Book Giveaway -starting Friday 25 at 12 noon (AESD) – on this blog. So leave your guess now and pop back on the weekend, read the Australia Day Blog Hop post, and you can double your chance of winning.

If you want another hint, you will find the author’s name on this list (my ‘most read’ Goodreads data).

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My Kleenex Cover Moment

HFAS front cover working

Here it is. And my reaction is crazy: crying, dizzy and shaking (so much I can’t type).

Is this weird or is it because it is just so wonderful — the cover and the significance of this achievement … this dream come true.

Thank you Larissa Edwards and the Simon & Schuster team. You are the best in the business with a beautiful boutique way of conducting that business. It makes you very special and I am very grateful you loved my book so much.

 

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It’s here!

IMG_0595It’s here! 2013. Where did the last year go? At last my countdown to March has made it to ‘weeks’. (No more, ‘next year’. My book is out THIS year.)

That’s right.

In about six weeks from now House for all Seasons will have been printed, packaged and posted off to bookshops** all over Australia and New Zealand. (**bookshop: (noun) – a place where books are sold.)

In eight weeks from now (the official release date of March 1) I will be sitting where I am right now – at my computer, hitting the F5 refresh button and waiting for… I don’t know what I will be waiting for actually. It’s all a bit weird still.

March 1 for me will also will be an early one. I intend celebrating the same way I celebrated the New Year today – at Sawtell Headland, watching the sun rise on a new phase in my life (my life as a ridgey didge published author. My ultimate, never-thought-it-would-ever-happen dream).

Which leads me to my New Years resolution – keep dreaming – and to my plan to inspire others, as part of the Writing Novels in Australia program. Each month during 2013 I will be a guest blogger, sharing my thoughts and experiences as an emerging author.

I’m especially keen to inspire those who think they’ve left it too late to dream. My advice:

Dare to dream.

It’s never too late.

Extraordinary things do happen to ordinary people.

I hope you’ll join me. http://writingnovelsinaustralia.com/

(** Of course I jest. We all know what bookshops are. But I fear we need to treat them like we treat all endangered species so they don’t disappear and become a thing of the past. Perhaps make your new year’s resolution to support yourlocal bookshop a little more than you do already (as well as embracing technology.) In other words… Share the lurve a little.