Reality TV: Entertainment or Research?

Currently on Sunday nights, channel 9 is showing a reality TV show. What’s new you say? Well, unlike most reality TV this is ONE show I will watch. And I love it. It is a documentary on the Royal Flying Doctor’s Service. With fabulous cinema photography  it captures the outback in all its vivid hues and highlights the isolation that many Australians live in. 

These doctors and nurses work really hard providing a ‘mantle of safety’ for all Australians in the outback, often in trying and difficult conditions. As an author of Medical Romance novels, many set in fictitious outback towns, I was thrilled to hear of the flight nurse and doctor who met at work and have since married. Hmmm, sounds like A Wedding in Warragurra!

For more info on the show, click HERE

What A Girl Wants

I was tidying up the office the other day and I found a box that had gone on holidays with us and I had dumped it in my office. It contained a note book from my summer holiday where I had scribbled down some story ideas for “The Surgeon’s Surprise Family”, along with pictures from a couple of magazines. 

At the bottom, next to some batteries, was a scummy bit of paper with blue writng on it. I remember my teenage son coming back from the beach saying, ‘I found this and you might find it useful.’ (bless him!)

As I read the scrawl of (and I am guessing here) a 15/16 year old girl I was stunned by how she had written down what every woman wants and what every ROMANCE AUTHOR puts into her hero.

Here is the double sided list…. Has strength, is gentle, has integrity, is trustworthy, is flexible, has spontaneity, is patient, is reliable, is loyal, has initiative,  is honest.  And on the other side she’d written ..dark hair, olive skin, sense of humour, funny, has respect for self and others, knows himself, comfortable in his own skin, jenerous (sic) giving, we understand each other.

And isn’t this the perfect Hero list? Now for some pictures to match this list head over to Nicola Marsh’s blog

Sweden – here I come!

 

It’s international post week down here in Victoria! Tuesday brought me French editions of A Wedding In Warragurra. So far all my books have gone into French so that wasn’t so much of a surprise arrival. BUT yesterday was!  I have debuted in Sweden and they even had that written on the cover.  I love these surprise packets in the post. What’s next?

Warragurra’s Gone….French!

                                                              Look what came in the post yesterday?  This is the French version of ‘A Wedding In Warragurra’. I love the French title, Les deux passions du Dr Tremont….The two passions of Dr Tremont.  THAT sums it up perfectly. Baden has two passions…his love for Kate and his love for his daughter, Sasha. It is his misguided belief about his duty to Sasha that nearly loses him Kate.  I’m thrilled about the cover too. What do you think?

And The Winner Is…….

 

Drum Roll………………….The envelope please…………. The winner of the Nicola Marsh, Robyn Grady and Fiona Lowe competition…..the person who will have THREE fabulous books winging their way to her this week, is

!!!Eve!!

Congratulations, Eve!!

Thanks to everyone who entered and there is no need to be disappointed as you can still buy all these stories either online or instore now!

A Week of Finishing

It’s been a big week!  The school holidays finished and the boys went back to school after giving the holidays 9/10! I was happy about that seeing as I thought I worked a lot. They pottered about with friends, went to the movies, a science club and generally had a good rest. And they needed to be rested as term 2 is 12 weeks!!

And yesterday I finished my 10th book!  I can’t believe it.  I met my goal of a chapter a week and I got there. I even survived the mid book demons where you wonder what on earth you are going to write next.  This last week, Tess and Cal spent a lot of time at “Westwinds” and I enjoyed it just as much as they did! So now I just have to do a final read of ‘The Surgeon’s Surprise Family’ and ping it to my editor. Then I wait.  But I’ll be busy waiting coming up with the next book:-)

 

 

WIND!

It’s school holidays here and yesterday I dispatched number two son off to the CSIRO Double Helix Club and number one son was busy with his computer and music and I tackled chapter nine.

There was a blustery north wind and the sunrise was bright red…always a sign of unstable weather, but who knew we were going to be hit by the tail end of a cyclone!  By noon the sky was steel grey with a tinge of pink through it. From inside you would have thought it was a chilly 10C and the clouds held snow.  But no! It was 26C and the pink tinge was red dust.

Gates came down, dogs escaped, wheely bins blew down the street. I went outside to gather up anything that could become a flying objects and was almost blown over.  I was struck by the different reactions between me and the 13 year-old and that is a combination of life experience and the perceived invinceabiliy of youth .  For me, anxiety kicked in…anything could happen.  For the teenager, it was excitement.  Finally the rain came and it was red….red dust that had been lifted from the Wimmera in northern Victoria and brought all the way down here. 

Amid the choas, I managed to write eight pages which was amazing!