Joanne

How often do we go on vacation, or simply go someplace unusual, and end up buying a souvenir to serve as a reminder of the fun times we had? How often do we visit fictional worlds and wish we could collect something to take home to remember our travels? Well, now you can. At least, you can if you visit Coxswain’s Bay in my Postcards From the Sea series. Because… Each cover is a postcard! The name is Burke McFarland, but folks call me Bear because I’m ugly as a warthog, big as a grizzly, and just as mean. Maybe that’s just my old granny’s opinion,Read More →

Today is the last day of release week, the end of this series of memories. After putting myself out there, constantly talking about the book and coming up with things to share and ways to post about it that are different, my brain has almost dried up.  I wrestled with the idea of skipping today’s post because I simply couldn’t think of something to share. And I never did think of any one thing. But… There was the time I inadvertently walked into the middle of a mob of wild pigs out behind the kitchen. Thoroughly scared the life out of me, and my appearing outRead More →

This next memory has two parts and involves a tissue, of all things.  The first part happened sometime in either 1986 or 1987. I don’t remember which year it was, but we were living on the station that became Kellynch in Persuade Me. At the time, Dad was the overseer because that station was under the management of the station next door. When the manager needed extra manpower, he’d call on Dad. In this instance, he needed help with the muster, the Aussie version of a roundup, so Dad had gone next door. Mum and us kids stayed home and all was going okay untilRead More →

If you’ve had a chance to read Persuade Me you’ll know that Anne goes to Uppercross and while she’s there, she starts working as station cook. And if you’ve been following along as I’ve talked about the book over the past however long, you’ll know that I too worked as station cook. Not only that, but I set the book on the station where I worked. Unlike Anne though, I wasn’t in my mid-20s when I started working there. I was a seventeen year old kid fresh out of high school.  Who didn’t know how to cook! I could boil water, or follow a coupleRead More →

After talking so much about dingoes being a part of the book, I thought it would be appropriate to return to that topic again in this series. Yes, they’re “only” a wild dog, but did you know the dingo is the largest land predator in Australia? And if you’ve ever seen the destruction a wild dog, or a pack of wild dogs, can do to newborn lambs and calves, you’ll understand why, in a land where agriculture is predominant, these animals are not viewed with any fondness. Also… if you’ve been woken in the dead of night by a blood-curdling howl, you’ll think even lessRead More →

Dingoes aren’t the only animals living in Australia, of course, and aren’t the only creatures I have memories of. There’s another memory that is kind of special because it involved my grandparents… My Mum came from Victoria, all the way at the south of the country, while my Dad came from Queensland in the north. So we had family up north and family down south, and as we’ve already talked about, for most of my childhood, we’d head south to where my grandparents lived to spend Christmas with them. What I hadn’t already mentioned is that, for much of my childhood, every year around JuneRead More →

It was a dark and stormy night… Or not. It was night, but that’s about as far as the similarities go. I don’t remember how old I was, but it had to have been sometime in the very early 80s when my next-younger brother was still a baby. We were out in the bush somewhere. I don’t know where, or why, but we’d stopped for tea. Dad built a campfire in front of the car, and we sat around the fire eating our evening meal. All around us was dark, and as the darkness grew, my younger brother began to cry.  I don’t know why.Read More →

To celebrate the release of Persuade Me, I thought it would be fun to do a series focusing on stories that didn’t make it into the book. If you’ve been following along these past months leading up to release, you’ll know that much of Persuade Me is based on real events. Things that happened to myself or my family. Real stories that I wove into the fictional story. And I did that by writing those events as I remember them.  However, sometimes our memories can be somewhat skewed. As I found out when I ran this memory by my parents… Away back in the early 1980s,Read More →

It occurred to me this week that I haven’t introduced the book that releases in just over a month!! This is, obviously, something new that was suggested to me recently, and I did it with Confusing Cassie, but forgot all about saying anything about Persuade Me. Persuade Me… coming April 5th One horrible misunderstanding. Two heartbroken people. For seven long years, Anne Elliot of Kellynch Station quietly mourned the loss of her first love. Now that she’s finally over Fred for good, her sister offers the perfect escape: Uppercross. This move, from one cattle station to another, offers new friends, new responsibilities, and now that she’s outRead More →

That’s right! Confusing Cassie is now available on Kindle and in KindleUnlimited! Here’s the blurb to tell you a little more about the story: _____________________ My name is Cassie Brand, and my life is a shambles. To start with, I’m renovating my grandmother’s house in the hope of turning it into a functioning bed and breakfast soon enough to avoid debtor’s prison. Oh wait, wrong time period. Same difference though, because if I fall behind, Dearborn Suttle (aka Doofus) will gladly take the estate off my hands.  Why, I don’t know. Don’t want to know. Don’t even care to find out. But I will doRead More →