Author Interview & Giveaway: Jenn J McLeod

Today I would like to welcome author Jenn J McLeod to The Burgeoning Bookshelf.

So let's get started and find out a little more about Jenn and her writing. 
 

Hello Jenn, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how many books you have had published?

Thank you so much for having me on your blog again.

I’m five-times published with Simon & Schuster in Oz and the UK’s Head of Zeus. My first book, House for all Seasons, was the #5 best-selling debut fiction novel in 2013. I have since  downsized my life into a purple and white caravan called Myrtle the Turtle and, as Australia’s nomadic novelist, I am not only ticking things off my bucket list while finding inspiration for more contemporary stories with a backdrop of country life, I am also Wild Myrtle Press – publisher of my 6th novel—House of Wishes.

What inspires you to write?

My need to tell stories keeps me writing but my readers keep me inspired to keep publishing them.

For several reasons, I came close to not publishing book #6 last year. I’d been finding the whole business of being writer, promoter, marketing expert, businessperson and general dogsbody sucking the joy from the storytelling side. Of course, then I had to go add publisher to my crazy list of job titles!!

But it was the achievement of publishing House of Wishes (now available worldwide in all formats, including audio) that has reinvigorated me. I entered self-publishing all gang-ho and confident, but then I started to wonder . . . Am I only as good as a ‘real’ publisher made me? As a result, I panicked and almost pulled the pin.

But, wow! What a reception House of Wishes had had – from the stunning cover by Bookcoverology (who didn’t mind a fusspot Jenn getting involved) to the words inside.

What is a typical writing day for you?

There is nothing typical about me at all! You’ve known me long enough to know that!!!!

Where is your favourite place to write?

Being fulltime nomad, I can’t get too attached to any one place—geographically speaking.

But when I do get to sit, I try to work outside with Mother Nature to inspire my scenes and settings.

Do you have any writing rituals or good luck charms?

Oooh! No! “Do many authors?” (she asks, quickly skimming previous blog posts to check if she’s with ‘the norm’!)

Is that where I’ve been going wrong? I’m joking, but I am a tad superstitious when it comes to mirrors, ladders, and joins in the footpath. (The latter is why I love country life. There are a lot less footpaths and cracks to avoid stepping on.)

What are you currently reading?

The third Chalk Hill novel – Last Bridge Before Home. I love, love, love a Lily Malone book. But I’m also fast becoming a fan of audio books because I can read while walking.

(Small and not too subtle segue into BIG announcement: House of Wishes is now available in audio: ask your library to add it to their catalogue or listen via Audible. Disclaimer, I did not produce my own audio book. The lovely folk at Unverscroft/Aurora Imprint bought the rights for that.

I have heard you were working on a picture book series for children, can you tell us a little more about this venture?

Oooh, you have been listening! That’s good to know. Yes, and I’ve already had fabulous feedback from several six-year-olds!! But I have a lot to learn and it seems everyone with a high profile is writing picture books. Perhaps the difference is, I did actually pen this one myself. That said, if there is anyone famous reading this—someone who will sell a few million copies just by putting their name on the cover—I’m your gal (ghost writer).

Your latest book House of Wishes was released on 19^th November, how did you come up with the idea for House of Wishes?

My readers have been asking for a story that covers the early years at Dandelion House, in Calingarry Crossing. In that way, House of Wishes is a kind of return to my debut – House for all Seasons (as well as the second Calingarry Crossing novel – Simmering Season.)

All three are all standalone reads, with the Calingarry Crossing setting in common. The reason for the return is to give voice to some secondary characters from House for all Seasons. Readers (and I) got attached to a couple of characters so explored their stories and before I knew it . . .

I have to say, House of Wishes is probably the work I am most proud of for several reasons (and Goodreads has also let me know). Although my first novel will always be special, I’ve learned I am capable of spinning a good yarn and bringing my characters (and the book) to life. Phew!

What would you like readers to get out of House of Wishes?

Thank you for this question . . . Due to the number of family and social issues I cover in this novel, I could go on ad nauseum. Instead, here’s me being brief:

1. How far we’ve come as a country in terms of women’s right to choose, but how easily the work done by generations of women in the past can slip away if we don’t keep speaking up about a woman’s right to choose.
2. Strength from the realisation that life can throw us curve balls, but to keep believing in the power of wishes.
3. An understanding that family is about connection rather than blood.

What's next for Jenn J McLeod? Do you have a new WIP?

I hope the next bit of news is about Jenn J. McLeod - picture book author. Until then, I’ll carry on with my 7th signature small-town story. A father-daughter themed plot about (you guessed it) secrets, but with a bit of mystery thrown in, and set in a beachside caravan park. The structure is my favourite dual timeline and moves between 2015 and 1981. (Ahh, the memories!)

Thank you for stopping by and spending some time with us on The Burgeoning Bookshelf.

And I’d like to thank you for supporting authors, especially Australian authors and offer one of your readers a Kindle version of House of Wishes (in return for sharing this post—or at least telling their Mum or sister or best friend!

Thank you Jenn for your generous offer. To win a Kindle copy of House of Wishes please enter via the Giveaway form below (open internationally).

House of Wishes:

A story for mothers, daughters, fathers and sons:

about the choices we make, the connections that matter,

the secrets we keep, and the power of a wish.

(available in print, ebook and in audio)

Blurb:

Dandelion House, 1974

Two teenage girls—strangers—make a pact to keep a secret.

Calingarry Crossing, 2014

For forty years, Beth and her mum have been everything to each other, but Beth is blind-sided when her mother dies, and her last wish is to have her ashes spread in a small-town cemetery.

On the outskirts of Calingarry Crossing, when Beth comes across a place called Dandelion House Retreat, her first thought is how appealing the name sounds. With her stage career waning, and struggling to see a future without her mum, her marriage, and her child, she hopes it’s a place where she can begin to heal.

After meeting Tom, a local cattleman, Beth is intrigued by his stories of the cursed, century-old river house and its reclusive owner, Gypsy. The more Beth learns, however, the more she questions her mother’s wishes.

When meeting Beth leads Tom to uncover a disturbing connection to the old house, he must decide if the truth will help a grieving daughter or hurt her more.

Should Dandelion House keep its last, long-held secret?

From the author of HOUSE FOR ALL SEASONS . . . 

"A painful exploration of estrangement, loss, truth, redemption and the power of wishes." The West Australian

 

This giveaway is now closed and the winner was ....  Michelle

Author Interview: Jaclyn Moriarty

Today I would like to welcome author Jaclyn Moriarty to The Burgeoning Bookshelf.

About the author: 
  

Jaclyn Moriarty is an Australian writer of young adult literature.

She studied English at the University of Sydney, and law at Yale University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD.
She currently lives in Sydney.

So let's get started and find out a little more about Jaci and her writing. 

Hello Jaclyn, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how many books you have had published?

Hello! Thanks for having me. I’m a former media and entertainment lawyer, and have published twelve books. Mostly, my books have been young adult fiction (both realistic/comedy fiction (the Ashbury series) and fantasy (the Colours of Madeleine trilogy). However, recently I have started a series of stand-alone ‘Kingdom and Empire’ books for 9 to 12-year-olds (the Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, and the Slightly Alarming Tale of the Whispering Wars), and I have just published a novel for adults, Gravity is the Thing. So I am not very consistent...

What inspires you to write? 

Walking up steep hills or flights of stairs (although that could just be because I want an excuse to stop walking up the steep hill or stairs), looking at the ocean or harbour, listening into other people’s conversations, music, and chocolate.

What is a typical writing day for you?

After I’ve driven my 12-year-old to the bus stop (or said goodbye to him at the door—he is supposed to walk to the bus stop, but I’m sympathetic because he has a very heavy schoolbag and it’s a steep hill…), I usually walk into Kirribilli, cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge, stare at the harbour for a while, come back, and go to a café where I write for a couple of hours. Then I come home, have lunch and write at the dining room table until my son comes home from school (he seems fine walking down the hill from the bus stop). When I say I ‘write at the dining room table,’ I mean I write for a few minutes then I get up to get more chocolate and tea, or to wander around the apartment in an aimless, restless way, and then I write for a few more minutes, and so on.

Where is your favourite place to write?

Coco Chocolate, a chocolate shop in Kirribilli which has one big table where you can sit and drink hot chocolate beneath a chandelier made of teacups, surrounded by shelves and shelves of chocolate.

This sounds like my perfect place to be. I might just pay it a visit myself!

Do you have any writing rituals or good luck charms?

I have a blue ceramic bowl that was given to me by my sister for my birthday years ago, and I always have it beside me, filled with fruit and chocolate, when I’m writing at home.  I also have to drink peppermint tea when I’m writing (although hot chocolate is permissible if I’m at Coco Chocolate).

What are you currently reading?

Cocaine Blues, the first Phryne Fisher mystery, by Kerry Greenwood. I am loving it.

You are well known for your Young Adult novels. What inspired your move to the Contemporary Fiction genre?

I am usually writing a novel for grownups at the same time as I’m writing books for younger people.  Sometimes it’s because I want to explore an adult character more closely than I can in younger fiction, and sometimes it’s because I want to express thoughts and ideas about life in the grownup world that would be of no particular interest to younger readers…

Your latest book, Gravity is the Thing was released on 26th March, how did you come up with the idea for Gravity is the Thing?

I often feel like I’m not very good at being a person.  I am very absent-minded and seem to miss rules about life that other people have figured out—such as how often you should go to the dentist and when you should start moisturising your face and how long you should stay in a relationship with somebody who is very pleasant but a bit of a bore.  So for a long time I had this fantasy that there should be an external committee providing everyone with regular, tailored updates, explaining exactly how their life should be lived.  This led me to the idea of the character named Abigail, who starts receiving chapters from The Guidebook, a self-help book, in the mail when she is fifteen years old, and continues to receive them until she is 35.  At that point, she is invited to an all-expenses paid retreat on an island to learn the ‘truth’ about The Guidebook.

Also, my young adult book, A Corner of White, had a teenage character whose father had gone missing, and I researched the field of missing persons for that book, so that I could try to understand how my character would feel.  I felt deeply moved by the suffering of people who have to live with the ambiguous loss of a missing family member or friend.  Abigail’s brother, Robert, went missing in the same year that she started receiving chapters from the Guidebook, and her search for the truth about what happened to him becomes entangled with her search for the truth about life, and how it should be led.

What would you like readers to get out of Gravity is the Thing?

I hope it makes them happy!  

Judging by the glowing reviews already coming through you have achieved your goal.

What's next for Jaclyn Moriarty? Do you have a new WIP? 

I am in the middle of a new middle grade fiction (with the working title, The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst) and am researching and writing notes for a new novel for grownups about time travel. 

I'm a recent convert to Time Travel novels so I'm excited to read your novel when it's finished.

Thank you for stopping by and spending some time with us on The Burgeoning Bookshelf.

Thanks for having me!  

Gravity is the thing is out now and should be hitting bookshops shelves all over the country.

 

  Blurb
Abigail Sorensen has spent her life trying to unwrap the events of 1990.

It was the year she started receiving random chapters from a self-help book called The Guidebook in the post.

It was also the year Robert, her brother, disappeared on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.

She believes the absurdity of The Guidebook and the mystery of her brother's disappearance must be connected.

Now thirty-five, owner of The Happiness Café and mother of four-year-old Oscar, Abigail has been invited to learn the truth behind The Guidebook at an all-expenses-paid retreat.

What she finds will be unexpected, life-affirming, and heartbreaking.

A story with extraordinary heart, warmth and wisdom.

 

 

Author Interview: Fiona Lowe

 

Today I would like to welcome author Fiona Lowe to The Burgeoning Bookshelf.

About the author: 

Fiona Lowe has been a midwife, a sexual health counsellor and a family support worker - an ideal career path for an author who writes novels about family and relationships. A recipient of the prestigious USA RITA award and the Australian RUBY award, Fiona's books are set in small country towns, feature real people facing difficult choices and explore how family ties and relationships impact our decisions. Fiona spent her early years in Papua New Guinea where, without television, reading was her best form of entertainment - inevitably leading to a livelong love of books. Fiona lives in Geelong, Victoria.

So let's get started and find out a little more about Fiona and her writing.

                                      

Hello Fiona, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how many books you have had published?

Thanks for having me.  I’ve changed writing directions three times over a decade. I have written 23 short medical romances, 6 full length romances and three big, juicy Australian-set sagas. HOME FIRES is my 32nd novel. Hmm, thanks for making me count. I’ve been telling people it’s my 31^st!

What inspires you to write?

People and places. I love the Australian bush and I’m an inveterate people watcher so I enjoy combining the two. I like exploring what makes people tick and why they react the way they do in different situations. As an author, I tend to put my characters through the wringer to squeeze out as much emotion as I can and I force people to make decisions when there is no clear moral choice and then deal with the fall out.

What is a typical writing day for you?

I tend to structure my week more than my day. Basically, I write every day but I also get out of the house a couple of times in the week, into the real world, where I talk to people. So, Tuesdays after tennis and Wednesdays after delivering meals on wheels, I start work around noon. Those are not great concentration writing days but without them, I’d be a hermit and that’s not healthy. Mondays, Thursday and Friday, I go to the gym and start writing around 8.30 and finish at 6pm and there’s a bit of admin in there like writing interviews like this and a little bit of playing on social media. Okay, sometimes there is far too much playing on social media and researching. I’m now writing with a timer! The last couple of months before deadline, I also work Saturday and Sunday mornings until 1pm. Then I pretend the afternoon is a full day. Of course, I do have holidays and when a book comes out, I’m on the road promoting it, but I find I can’t go and play in the morning and have a good writing day. I am my most creative first thing in the morning and strangely between 4-6pm.

Where is your favourite place to write?

I need silence to write so I write in my office wearing noise cancelling head phones.

Do you have any writing rituals or good luck charms?

Hmm, is checking Goodreads and Amazon rankings a ritual? They are definitely not good luck charms ;-)

What are you currently reading?

Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

You are well known for your Contemporary Romance novels. What inspired your move to the General Fiction genre?

A few things happened at once. I had a book come out in the USA during a major publishing house reshuffle where my editor left and my book really didn’t get out of the warehouse. The whys and wherefores don’t count, it’s just numbers, so when I didn’t sell many books, they were not interested in me writing another one for them. Although I’d lived in the US and enjoyed setting books there, I had an overwhelming desire to write a book not only set in Australia, but in my own back yard. I also had an itch to break away from the absolute happy ending, which is a must in a romance and I wanted to write a bigger novel with more characters and explore human nature—the good, the bad and the ugly. So, I wrote Daughter of Mine, then Birthright and now Home Fires.

Your latest book Home Fires is released today, 18th February. How did you come up with the idea for Home Fires?

I think it’s been brewing all my life. Bush fires are such an integral part of life as a Victorian and I have had a few pivotal moments where fire has impacted on me. First as a student nurse where I was in the field on Ash Wednesday, followed by working on the burns unit nursing victims. Those experiences never leave you. Years later, as a mother on Black Saturday, I experienced different sort of stress. But the final push to write Home Fires was Christmas Day 2015, when just down the road from me, friends and acquaintances had to stand up and walk away from Christmas lunch to save their lives.

What would you like readers to get out of Home Fires?

I’d like readers to reflect on the long-term damaging effects of trauma after natural disasters and how it isn’t so much a community rebuilding, but finding a whole new way to live. It takes years, far more years then we imagine, for communities to regain their health. The communities also need income to grow so visit and holiday in the area as soon as possible and spend some money there. Every cent counts. And don’t worry, I promise Home Fires has a hopeful ending.

What's next for Fiona Lowe? Do you have a new WIP?

I’m currently working on my 2020 release. The working title is NOT THAT KIND OF WOMAN and it’s shaping up to be another large novel about women, friendship and living with the choices we make.

Thank you for stopping by and spending some time with us on The Burgeoning Bookshelf.

It’s been great. Thanks for having me!

Home Fires is out today and should be hitting bookshops shelves all of the country.

 About the book:

From the bestselling Australian author of Daughter of Mine and Birthright. When a lethal bushfire tore through Myrtle, nestled in Victoria's breathtaking Otway Ranges, the town's buildings - and the lives of its residents - were left as smouldering ash. For three women in particular, the fire fractured their lives and their relationships.

Eighteen months later, with the flurry of national attention long past, Myrtle stands restored, shiny and new. But is the outside polish just a veneer? Community stalwart Julie thinks tourism could bring back some financial stability to their little corner of the world and soon prods Claire, Bec and Sophie into joining her group. But the scar tissue of trauma runs deep, and as each woman exposes her secrets and faces the damage that day wrought, a shocking truth will emerge that will shake the town to its newly rebuilt foundations...