1. Tell me about
your latest release? Genre?
Thanks so much
for having me on your blog again, Janet. It is always a pleasure to be here. Challenging
Mountains, Book 3 in my Settlers series, traces the lives and adventures of
members of a family. Set in the early 1840s in Australia, Tim, eldest son of
Bella and Tiger Carstairs, is fed up with his Government job in Sydney, and
decides to set out on a month long trek to the budding settlement of Port
Philip in the south. Accompanied by his uncle Carlos, and Josephine, a
headstrong young woman who decides to join them, they encounter many setbacks
along the way in the mostly untamed land.
2. Where did the
idea arise?
Book 3 in this
series had been brewing in my head for a long time. My dilemma was who to set
in the lead role, as Bella and Tiger had a large family. Once I began to plan
the story, I realised that the main character was always meant to be Timothy
Carstairs, their eldest son. Tim was born in tumultuous times and was a small
child when his father, Tiger, decided to head west to greener pastures. The
road across the mountains was barely defined in those early days and so Tim was
no stranger to dangerous journeys.
3. How much research
was involved? Did you stay on point or be distracted by wanting to look at just
one more thing?
There was still
an immense amount of research to do to keep the facts correct, even though it
is set in the 1800s as were book 1 and 2. The trip the travellers undertook
covered many miles and the landscape was changing constantly as new towns
sprang up along the way in those early days of discovery. They covered many
miles on horseback or wagon. There were numerous rivers and creeks to be
crossed, some hazardous, and in those days once Sydney was left behind, the
bridges were few. There was little in the way of law; few churches and even
less schools, so it was a fact that the children of squatters ran wild and as untamed
as the land. When the travellers reached their destination there was another
set of problems coping in a barely settled town, where bushrangers sought an
easy life and were a constant threat. This was supposed to be the last in this
series, but now Tim’s sister Annie is pestering me to write her story so that
is in its early stages, while I wait for her to tell me exactly which direction
she wants to go.
4. How long did you
take to write the book?
I’m not really
sure as I have no record of when I began, but think it was something like 8 to
10 months from when the idea started keeping me awake at night to when I typed
‘the end’.
5. Now a bit about
you. How long have you been writing? What is your Sun Sign?
I guess my short
answer to that is, always, but I began writing in earnest about 30 years ago.
Most writers, like me, started scribbling stories from the moment we discovered
how to put words together. My first published book was Mystic Mountains (Settlers
Book 1) then published under another title. Readers seem fascinated by the
early days of Australia. I am a Scorpio.
6. Do you write in a
number of genres or stick to one?
I have written
Historicals, Time-Travels, Contemporaries, Family Sagas, and had a crack at a
Fantasy/Sci-Fi, but all have romance at their heart, so I am most definitely a
romance writer. Only one of my books strays from the Romance genre and that is Crying is for Babies, which is based on
the life of one of my sisters.
7. Where can you be
found?
Find me and my
books here on my Books We Love author page:
Thanks again for having me as a guest on you blog, Janet.
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