Fiction Friday | The Love Penalty

I’ve written all kinds of romances over the years, with tropes ranging from friends-to-more (The Breakup Project), to best friends-to-more (Tangled up in Love), opposites attract (too many to name), arranged marriage (The Captivating Lady Charlotte, Midnight’s Budding Morrow), to various others. One thing I haven’t done too much of the ‘bad’ girl. I feel …

Short Story Fun

Earlier this year I read a collection of short stories based on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Now I’m not normally a short story gal, but reading these different stories by different authors all paying homage to a beloved fictional heroine, proved to be the perfect amount of reading before I dropped off to sleep. So …

Fiction Friday | What’s the deal with Celebrity books?

Lights, camera, action! I recently heard my new release Muskoka Spotlight being described as a celebrity romance book. I suppose it is, as it’s about a famous Hollywood actor hiding out in Muskoka, Canada where he meets an aged care nurse, and sparks fly, etc. It’s just I hadn’t really thought about it in that …

Fiction Friday | What Makes a Strong Heroine?

Today I am talking about What Makes a Strong Heroine? It takes a special kind of woman to cope with all the flak, so it was interesting to consider what kind of qualities a woman might need to deal with situations where she could face anything from misogynistic remarks to having hot dogs thrown at …

Friday Fiction | Love Somebody Like You

A few years ago I approached Aussie author friend Narelle Atkins about the possibility of doing a multi-author Christian contemporary romance series. We brainstormed ideas, authors we knew who wrote in a similar genre (or planned to), and settled on the concept of a fictional town set in east Washington state called Trinity Lakes. The …

Fiction Friday | History Can Be Fun!

I know. “History Can be Fun!” sounds like a lame kid’s show, but the older I get the more I realise this truth. History can be fun. I still remember a high school history teacher who sat at the desk and read the textbook aloud as the class struggled to keep their eyes open. Needless …

Writer’s Inspiration | Exploring the Past

A few weeks ago I was presented with the opportunity to take my daughter to the World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst, NSW. I might’ve grumbled at the time (my other daughter was returning from India that same day and I wanted to know All The Things!) but I went, because I realised this was …

Fiction Friday | Trying Something New

It gets a little easy sometimes to do the same old thing all the time, doesn’t it? Prepare spaghetti bolognaise once a week / fortnight? Check. (Hey, it’s simple to cook and the fam like it) Keep exercise to a daily walk-the-dog? Check.  (At least I do that much!) Order the same thing at a …

Fact or Fiction?

One of the things I love to do while writing is to incorporate real life things into my books. I’m talking everything from real life incidents that have happened to me (I’m looking at you, mouse-incident-in-tent as featured in Muskoka Blue), or places I’ve visited (hello, Chicago Art Institute with a starring role in Checked …