Today I’d like you to meet well-known Aussie author Juanita Kees. She creates emotionally engaging worlds steeped in romance, suspense, mystery and intrigue, set in dusty, rural outback Australia and also on the NASCAR racetracks of America.
Her small town and Australian rural romances have made the Amazon bestseller and top 100 lists. Juanita writes mostly contemporary and Australian rural romantic suspense but also likes to dabble in the ponds of fantasy and paranormal with Greek gods brought to life in the 21st century. When she’s not writing, Juanita is mother to three grown boys and has a passion for fast cars and country living. Now it’s over to Juanita!
Finding love and hope in small towns with dark secrets …
Thank you for hosting me on your blog, Jennifer.
Born and raised in Africa, I always thought the Serengeti was the coolest place in the world, and that wildlife didn’t exist outside of elephants, rhino, lions and giraffe. But from the early age of six, I developed a love affair with Australia, kangaroos, kookaburras and koalas, most likely thanks to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. In the late nineties, my dreams were realised when we emigrated to Western Australia and here, I discovered a whole new world. I remember leaving Perth airport and there were kangaroos in the fields on the way out. Sadly, they’re all gone now as the airport has grown and expanded.
Valley of the Giants
Western Australia has some of the wildest, prettiest coastline. Inland is filled with treasures too, like Karajini National Park to the north-west with its breathtaking gorges, land of the Banyjima, Kurrama and Innawonga people. Down to the south-east, Albany boasts blow-holes that shoot fountains of water up through the rocks, driven by the sheer force of nature and the sea. And in Walpole, you can walk through the treetops in the Valley of the Giants amid the amazing Karri trees. What I love most about the walk is the smell of the earth, the trees and the incredible peaceful silence when you’re deep in the forest.
Closer to home is my favourite place, hidden deep in the Perth hills, Araluen Botanical Park. This is where I set my very first series, Under the Law. Given the park’s history, it seemed like the perfect location for a group of troubled youths, and the woman set on helping them, to turn their lives around.
Kookaburra
In 1929, Australian businessman, politician and founder of the Young Australia League, J.J. Simons, built a holiday camp for his youth organisation on 59 hectares in a misty valley in Roleystone. The name he gave it was Araluen, an Eastern States Aboriginal word meaning “singing waters,” “running waters” or “place of lilies.” The buildings and structures throughout Araluen were built using local stone and timber, all constructed by league members and volunteers. An attractive centrepiece in the park is The Grove of the Unforgotten built in memory of eighty-eight Young Australia League members killed in World War I. Constructed in a series of terraces, water cascades into the pool of reflection. Every year, on Remembrance Day, the park is full of red poppies.
In the early 2000’s, a change in employment found me travelling inland to the (then) small gold mining town of Boddington, snuggled in the wheatbelt. My weekly drive was filled with rolling landscapes, canola fields, vineyards, cattle and sheep farms, and a long road into a world you’d never guess existed buried deep behind nature. In contrast, the mine was a huge, arid red scar on the landscape. I was very happy to learn that the land is steadily being rehabilitated in keeping with land-owner agreements. That got me thinking about the dwindling farms that gave way to those seeking more secure employment with the mine and wondering how farmers and miners got along. And so, the Wongan Creek series was born.
Alaska & my handsome son
In all my Australian Rural stories, I try to write in a special animal or two. Home to Bindarra Creek stars Muttley, the orphaned kangaroo, and a cheeky cockatoo named Curly. In Whispers at Wongan Creek, Travis owns a very sexy horse named Fantasia, old man Harry’s sheep love to wander and his trusty dog, Robbie, never leaves his side. Robbie becomes a life-saving hero in both Whispers and Shadows over Wongan Creek. In Secrets at Wongan Creek, hero Harley has a Catahoula Leopard Dog named Loki whose character was inspired by my crazy grandfurbaby, Alaska. And last but not least, is Lucky, Fen’s three-legged bearded dragon who also becomes a hero in Shadows Over Wongan Creek.
I love this wonderful, inspiring, vibrant land. There are stories to tell everywhere.
Secrets abound in the small Western Australian farming community of Wongan Creek. Old secrets resurface and new ones come to town, drawing the community together as gold fever threatens to tear their town apart.
Rural romance at its dusty best ~ Bree (Goodreads)
Shadows over Wongan Creek (Book 3 – Wongan Creek Stories)
When the shadows ride in Wongan Creek…Fenella Rose-Waterman is happy running The Cranky Lizard winery until a broken relationship lifts the lid on the Pandora’s Box of her past. After years of repressed memories haunting her dreams, she is forced to face the truth to find justice. But with truth comes a danger that puts everyone she loves at risk.
Kieran Murphy left Wongan Creek a newly-wed and returned a widower. He believes he and his young son will find healing in the town that healed him once before. Instead, he finds the woman he loved running scared, her life in turmoil and her business under threat.
As the shadows of the past gather on the horizon, will they lose their chance of happiness or will they find healing together?
Kobo ~ Amazon AU ~ Amazon UK ~ Amazon US ~ iTunes ~ Google Books ~ Harper Collins ~ Romance.com.au
Juanita loves to hear from fans and enjoys sharing her writing journey: Join her at her website, on Twitter, on Facebook or follow her on BookBub
Discover more about Australasian rural authors at our Australian & NZ Rural Fiction website!
Today I’d like to introduce you to Aussie author Leisl Leighton, a fellow horse lover! Leisl is a tall red head with an overly large imagination.
All my published novels so far have rural settings, mostly in mountainous or farmland regions, and the only explanation I can give is that I feel so at home where there are hills and mountains and, if I’m very lucky, snow.
It started when a family friend who also loved horses, the bush and horse riding, took me on a 5-day horse riding trek from Omeo through the Victorian Alpine region when I was thirteen. We rode along the high plains and down into the valleys, across rivers and back up again, staying in stockman’s huts and old woolsheds. I skinned rabbits, avoided snakes, survived sleeping in a shed with spiders as big as my face, and it was amazing and exhilarating and tiring and so much fun I still remember it vividly to this day. My sister was always a little jealous she didn’t get to come with me and our family friend, so mum and dad decided to enrol us in a horse riding camp down near Anglesea where we got to ride through the state forest and learn to look after the horses. We rode through heat and torrential rain, cold so profound that it snowed and we loved every moment. We did this every year through high school, and it had such a profound effect on me, that my husband thought it the perfect place to propose to me. He sneakily organised a special ride with just us and a stop in a lovely scenic place so he could pop the question. So romantic!
But I digress. Years after we finished high school and stopped going to the camps, my sister and I wanted to experience horse riding through the bush again. She particularly wanted to do a ride through the Victorian Alps and the family friend who had taken me all those years ago was keen to come with us too.
Today I’m introducing Aussie author Sandie Docker. Sandie writes about love, loss, family and small country towns. Her debut novel, The 
When I first started writing, I was living and working in London. Having grown up in Coffs Harbour, back when it was a town of only 20,000 people, London was a far cry from the small coastal upbringing of my youth. So far from home in a huge anonymous city and missing the familiarity and community that comes with small Aussie towns, it isn’t surprising, I guess, that my first manuscript – you know that one that all authors have that will never see the light day – was set in my home town of Coffs.
Creek Café
Firstly I’d like to wish a belated Happy Mother’s day to all the mums out there, including today’s featured writer Leanne (and to me 🙂 !)
Hi Jennifer, and thanks for having me on your blog. Merindah Park is the story of a family farm, torn apart by a gambling addicted father. After his death, the four siblings—John, Shannon, and twins Rachel and Serena—spend five difficult years consolidating debts and working to get the farm out of trouble.
As for my own connection with the rural life, I grew up in a very small town in New Zealand as a ‘townie’. I begged and borrowed horses from farmers, so I could attend the local pony club, and eventually, my paper route earned me enough cash that I could afford to rent a paddock from a neighbour and have my own (leased) horse. Land of Oz was a retired racehorse, and we had a couple of years of fun together before I went to university and he went back to his owner. The pull of horses didn’t go away, and I worked as a strapper in racing stables all through my years at university, getting up early to do the morning shift (and even riding a couple of slow quiet ones in trackwork). It wasn’t until much later that I could bring together my love of racehorses and my career, and I started writing data analysis based articles for horse racing magazines. Eventually in 2016, I tried my hand at fiction, and Merindah Park is my fifth published novel.
My stories are not voices so much as pictures in my head, moving pictures. Characters are formed on a twist of a brow or a turn of a hand. Sometimes the first thing to come along will be a character’s name. Always the two words that follow are ‘What if?’
Hi Jennifer, and thanks for having me visit.
2015 vintage. The picking was hard work as the Grenache bushes are low to the ground. But a good grape stomping followed by a delicious breakfast (including some of the lovely wine) made it all worthwhile.
The old Port Willunga Jetty has so much history and the famous Star of Greece restaurant perches on the cliff above, named for the ship that was wrecked only one hundred metres offshore in 1888, now a popular dive site. The rapidly crumbling jetty and the storage caves dug into the cliffs make it one of the most photographed places in South Australia. The area and the jetty get a mention in the McLaren Vale novels too.
Much of the coastline is a sanctuary, particularly the Aldinga Reef area. The birdlife is abundant and kites can often be seen soaring along the golden limestone cliffs looking for prey. Dolphin pods are a regular sight and the area is also a haven for shingleback lizards (otherwise known as Sleepy Lizards) as well as several species of protected flora.
thousand miles away once you’re there. You can feel the stresses of the city just falling away when you turn the corner and see the turquoise waters of the Spencer Gulf stretching out before you. 
in history. From Henry Handel Richardson’s (yes she’s a woman) Fortunes Of Richard Mahoney, Nancy Cato’s All The Rivers Run through to Colleen McCullough’s Thorn Birds, the drama, difficulties and romance of the bush has long been the stuff of great narrative tales. And the tradition continues!
