Fleur McDonald is one of Australia’s leading rural literature authors, with her books becoming best sellers almost as quickly as they hit the shelves. Having sold over 500,000 copies of her books, she has solidified her position as one of the country’s favourite storytellers.

A green tinge and some giveaways

Well, the rain has brought a slight green tinge to the land. It’s lovely to see the wet soil and little shoots of clovers and grasses beginning to poke their heads up. It’s also fantastic not to have the dust blowing or the forty five degree days that seemed to plague us this year. The…

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Glorious mornings

There are some days that it’s a pleasure to get out of bed at 5am. Today was one of those days! We were carting lambs in between the farms, so we were up early with a very busy day in front of us. Once we’d loaded the lambs and Anthony had trundled off in the…

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Dalgety Women’s Day 2010

I’m really privileged to be asked to speak at the Dalgety Women’s Day in NSW on the 28th of April. I’m really excited about this, as I know these days for women are so important in building the friendships and camaraderie, that is needed to deal with life of the land. As farmers we need…

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Back to the real world!

Well, there has been so much going on in my book world, it’s been a relief to get back out into the paddocks again! We’re still waiting on the break of the season and have got a few sheep on the next door neighbours property, on agistment, as our water supplies are low. The past few…

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Guest Blog: Jeff Toghill

When I met Jeff through my writing cours, straight after I left school, I never realised what an impact he was going to have on my life. I know the first few assignments for The Writing School I hadn’t put my best into and Jeff’s comments reflected that. Suddenly I became too busy to do something…

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New Competition – Purple Roads

We’re having a new competition! Check out these photos – they’re of my friend, Kate. What we want you to do, now that Blue Skies has hit the shelves, is take photos (only decent ones – don’t want to see you sitting on the loo!) of you reading Blue Skies. You either need to post…

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Discount for Website readers!

Allen and Unwin are the best publishers, I reckon! Not only have they been fantastic at advertising Blue Skies, through their Facebook Page (join, to be eligible for all sorts of giveaways and hear all the latest news on their authors), but they are giving a 20% discount on everyone who reads my blog! Just…

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Blue Skies Launch

What a day! It was awesome! The Condy Fair really was brilliant this year – not that it hasn’t been other years, but there were so many people, so many things to do and just a fantastic atmosphere to the day. A sharp thunderstorm the night before had our hearts in our mouths, but even…

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Treasure Hunt

Over the past few months, I and three other writers of novels set in the Australian outback have got together (in a cyber-sense) to do some promotion; while we each have different writing styles, our books probably appeal to a similar audience, as they’re set in various parts of regional Australia that we each know…

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The Condy Fair is on again!

Well next Saturday is the Condingup Community Fair, aka the Condy Fair! It’s always such a fantastic day – we have a hard working committee that makes sure that it goes off without a hitch and that there are many exciting and fun things happening. Because the fair is held to raise money for our…

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The Brains

Meet Cal. She’s the brains behind Blue Skies. When we first started talking about what the next book would hold, we came up with a few ideas. 1. Cal’s house is very old (it was actually the first double-brick home built on farming land in Esperance) and is steeped in history. I can’t remember the year, but…

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Guest Post: Hélène Young

I have really met some lovely people through my few short years in the writing world. The three women, who are involved in our new initiative Facebook Page (Australian Outback mysteries and romances, and Twitter @outbackromances) are some of them! Today, you get to meet Hélène Young, who is part of this group. Hélène’s first…

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Winners Blog!

Well today I’ve drawn the first of our new initiative – ‘Giveaways for both Readers and Writers! The winners are: Readers – Narrelle and Writers – Anita! Congratulations to you both. I hope that you enjoy your prizes. Narrelle wanted to win Liar by Justine Larbalestier. There is a wonderful review of it here and…

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Blue Skies Launch and Book Signings!

I have an opportunity to offer you guys a pre-release copy of Blue Skies! Our local bookshop, Le Grand bookshop, has secured 200 copies before Blue Skies is due out. Now these are for a couple of events. First one is that the Blue Skies Launch will be held at the Condingup Community Fair on…

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Interesting…

Yesterday we had a heap of cows in the yards. We were preg-testing and giving them their booster needles. On the way back to the paddock with them I stopped at a line of trees, interested in why the bark was falling off one of them. It didn’t seem to be sick in anyway. I…

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Hungry Cows!

Our cows are pretty clued in and knows what happens on our farm, almost before we do! They are an indication of what’s happening with the weather. If they are camped up, sitting as far away from the south as they can with their backs in that direction, you can guess there is going to…

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The blood-red sun

Summer has taken its toll of a lot of the people and animals this year. I’m sure ours hasn’t been has hot as the top half of Australia, but it’s been a stinker compared to what we are used to. Our hottest day was 48 degrees. We had about six catastrophic fire dangers issued and the…

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There’s a snake in the house!

There was some excitement in our house this morning! I opened the front door and in-between the screen door and wooden door was a Tiger snake. I had the kids and Rocket following me, so I tried to slam the door, hold them all back and try and control my total fear. All in one…

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