Dear Diary…

Gillo and Russell Woolf from our ABC radio in Perth had a brilliant segment on yesterday about diaries. They wanted to know if any of the listeners had ever kept one. I wish I could have posted it hear for you to listen, because it was so good. But there wasn’t a podcast made of it.…

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Beaching it and a wedding anniversary

Last night was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. Hard to believe that so much has happened within that time. Especially when the wedding seems like only yesterday. Two kids, two or three farm bought and sold and bought again. And as with most families, there are few people missing from our family now, who were there…

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Fun times

I love photos. Photos are memories and I’m always snapping, where ever I go. Every time I release a new book, the call comes for new publicity photos. This is one of my least favourite things to do, because I’m much happier behind a computer screen, or out in the paddock, than I am in…

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How this farmer met her husband…

In keeping with the TV show A Farmer wants a Wife, I thought it would be a fantastic and timely opportunity to bring you some love stories from the bush. Now, pick your jaws up! Yes, I know I have made a huge issue, about NOT writing ‘just’ romance in all of my books and…

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Let’s kill ’em!

  Sometimes writing just doesn’t go the way you plan it! Mostly I love it when that happens because if something happens, which I don’t is going to happen, then hopefully you guys won’t see it coming and get the same thrill and feeling of surprise I got, when I wrote it. (phew, do you…

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The glory of evening

  June has been a wonderfully wet month and a very busy one! We were screaming for rain in the first week, but slowly Mother nature built her Cold Front’s a sent them one by one, week by week and let the clouds do their job. Rain it did – the second week of June…

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Silver Gums

It can be daunting sitting down at a blank computer screen wondering if I know enough words to fill it enough to tell a story. I need somewhere between 90 and 100,000 of the bloody things! And, obviously, they all have to make sense and have a story line in there as well.

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‘Fire!’

  Fires can be frightening. They’re unpredictable, one moment moving slowly, the next whipping across a paddock, fuelled by strong winds and dry grass or stubbles. However, this is the time of year that we chose to burn. Chilly mornings and nights, gives us a chance to do what we call a ‘slow burn or…

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Life defining moments with music

  Do ever feel you can define your life with songs? I do. During earlier posts, I’ve talked about my love of music and how is it a huge part of my life. What I’m really interested in is what music makes your world go around? I went to Boarding school from 1987 to 1991.…

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Babies galore…

It’s that time of year again… Yes, BABIES! This is one of my favourite times in our farming calendar. And this season, it’s made even better by the 60mm of rain we had about two weeks ago; there is a green pick for all the animals. (By ‘green pick’ I mean the clover and grasses…

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A week of wonders!

  Yesterday we woke to our hill being shrouded in heavy, low cloud and gentle showers pushing up from the coast. It was a beautiful way to start the day, especially after the pounding we had on Thursday evening. It was the most incredible thunderstorm I have ever seen and we netted a whopping 46mm…

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My new editor

  I’m lucky enough to have a writing partner. He’s pretty good at what he does; he keeps my feet warm, doesn’t answer back and sits there with his head to one side listening to me argue with myself about plot points. It seems that I often bore him though. That’s when he will lie…

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Interview: Tony Park

I was so lucky to meet Tony while in Perth recently. We discovered a mutual love of Michael Connelly’s writing and talked the craft of writing. It was so exciting to listen to what Tony had to say. Fleur: Welcome to the amazing author Tony Park. Tony has published over eight fiction novels plus a…

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I love my dictionary…

So I love words. I guess that isn’t surprising since I use them to craft my stories. The English language is incredible. How awesome it is to be able to tell someone in three words that they’re beautiful, or express how proud you are of your children’s achievements. I love the way some words sound…

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Aussie Author Month

April marks the start of Aussie Author Month. It’s the brain child of my web guru, Nyssa and two of her fellow book lovers, Kat from Book Thingo and Ali and Rosie at Fangtastic It’s a pretty exciting thing to be involved in. After reading Helene Young’s blog about Snugglepot and Cuddle Pie and Bronwyn…

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Evenings

When you have a young family, evening is usually a crazy time of day! Trying to get them fed, bathed, homework done, the list goes on. I’ve had a friend staying with me, for the past two weeks – if you’ve read the acknowledgements in either of my books, you’ll know the name ‘Mrs. Mackay’…

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The Magic of Book Stores

Very rarely do I wade into the waters that could  potentially be a mine field, however… News of the REDgroup going into voluntary administration, although not unexpected, has placed the publishing world in limbo. Whether or not the reports in the media are a true reflection of the industry remains to be seen, but as…

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