Tag Archives: Little Lonsdale Group

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Posted on by
10

Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Fellow author and blogger Lord David Prosser (http://barsetshirediaries.wordpress.com/ ) has kindly nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award! After a little online snooping I discovered that he is actually a Lord. He’s the Lord of Bouldnor, an hereditary Manorial title lost in the mists of time, well the 1400′s anyway. I wonder how his Lordship feels about me being a staunch Aussie republican? Anyway, thank you for the nomination.

As an award winner, I’m asked to:

  1. Display the award certificate on my website and include a link to my sponsor.
  2. List five unusual facts about myself.
  3. Present 5 awards to deserving bloggers and drop them a comment to tip them off.

I’ve fulfilled the first condition which is to thank my sponsor and link back to his blog. Secondly I must post the award badge to my blog – done. By the way, I’ve changed the rules a bit to suit myself. Us colonials aren’t good at taking orders, my Lord. Okay, now for five unusual things about me.

  1. I once drove a tractor for a living.
  2. I have a great interest, affection and admiration for insects, particularly the social insects – wasps, ants and bees. Many insects display curiosity, learning ability and parental devotion (as you’ll discover if you read my first novel, Wasp Season) They are fascinating and highly underrated creatures.
  3. At one stage I gave up my job as a lawyer to become a full-time foster carer.
  4. I love to buy spent hens from battery farms. There is nothing quite so heart-warming as rehabilitating such birds, watching them learn to scratch, nest and dust-bathe etc. In return I get their friendship and lovely fresh eggs for many years.
  5. I am a member of a little writing group called the Little Lonsdale Group. Since its formation just a few years ago, four of our members (including me) have become published by major publishers – Random House, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. Pretty good going, huh?

Now for the part where I nominate five other bloggers. Drum roll please …

  1. Storie – Diane Simonelli
    http://dianesimonelli.wordpress.com/
  2. Margareta Osborn – The Voice Of The Bush http://www.margaretaosborn.com.au/blog-listing
  3. Jenn J Mcleod – Come Home to the Country
    http://www.jennjmcleod.com/blog/
  4. Whitney K E – Aspiring Romance Author
    http://whitneyk-e.blogspot.com.au/
  5. The Ecstacy Files – Kate Belle – (Over 18 only!)
    http://ecstasyfiles.com/blog/

And nominees, don’t feel obliged. I know how busy you all are!

BB2013_Nominee

Brumby’s Run – Melbourne Writer’s Festival Launch

Posted on by
6

Yesterday saw Brumby’s Run launched by Andrea Goldsmith at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. For me, the day was the culmination of a fraught and fascinating journey. What a marvellous moment – to achieve my dream of mainstream publication, and to celebrate it with my readers, friends and family. And not only that, to do so at such an important festival, deep in the heart of Melbourne, a Unesco City of Literature. Melbourne’s literary heritage and culture is internationally recognised, and I am proud to be part of it. I am also proud to be out with Penguin, so thanks to my lovely publisher, Belinda Byrne.

Andrea Goldsmith has published six novels. Her seventh book, The Memory Trap, will  be released by Harper Collins next year. Rich in ideas and characterisation, her novels tell of contemporary life in all its diversity. Narratives of ambition, love, family, art, music and relationships abound in her books. But for me, Andrea is more than an acclaimed and gifted author – she has been my friend and mentor for years. So it was doubly delicious to have her stand up for me yesterday.

Andrea Goldsmith and MC Troy Hunter

As always, Andrea was bright, erudite and charming. Her generous praise of Brumby’s Run impressed me so much, I wanted to buy it myself! Rather than go with the tired old speech-then-reading format, Andrea proposed a Q&A session instead. This lifted the launch, making it far more dynamic and entertaining. Thanks for that suggestion Andrea, and also of course, for your longstanding support and wisdom.

 

Andrea and the Little Lonsdale group

My friend Troy Hunter (from the Little Lonsdale Group, aka LLG), was MC for the event and what an inspired performance it was too! The Little Lonsdale Group is my talented writing group. We all completed an advanced Year of the Novel with Andrea a few years ago, and have since gone from strength to strength. Mine is the second launch from our group so far. First was Margareta Osborn (Bella’s Run) in March. Next will be Kate Rizzetti and Kathryn Ledson, and it won’t stop there. We can look forward to many marvellous writing achievements from this group in the months and years to come.

So thank you for to everybody who either came along yesterday, or who sent me their kind wishes. I appreciate each and every one of you! Now it’s time to concentrate on finishing my new novel, Firewater, due out with Penguin next year.

Sunday with Margareta Osborn

Posted on by
Reply

Today I have my friend Margareta Osborn visiting. I’ll let you in on a secret. If it wasn’t for Margareta dragging me along to the RWA Conference last year, I wouldn’t have pitched Brumby’s Run to Penguin. That pitch led directly to a book deal, so I have a lot to thank her for. Margareta is a passionate rural story-teller, and her debut novel, Bella’s Run has become a best-seller. Now, over to Margareta …

Thanks Jen, for inviting me to be a guest on your blog.  For those that don’t know, Jennifer and I are members of the same writing group, the fabulously talented and totally awesome Little Lonsdale Group (the LLG’s). The group is aptly named for the street situated outside where we met at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne (a six hour round trip for me) a couple of years ago. We were all in Andrea Goldsmith’s Advanced Year of the Novel class. What a wonderful time we had and the group continues to meet (and excel) with four published authors and the rest hard on their heels.

Tell us about your call story – or how you received your first offer of publication. (That’s what I always love hearing!)

Oh dear, I’m way off the track. What was I supposed to be talking about, Jen? My call story? Right. Well, it went like this. After being knocked back by one mainstream publisher with a ‘very positive’ rejection (yes, I kid you not, they can be positive) I managed to obtain a literary agent using that self same positive rejection (see, I told you). My agent then submitted the manuscript of my debut novel BELLA’S RUN to three major publishing houses. The day she rang me to tell me she had done this I was driving a truck laden with cattle down the hill from a dry paddock to the family homestead property. I was going over the cattle underpass when she rang to tell me BELLA’S RUN was sitting on the commissioning editors desks of three of the ‘Big Six’, which made me nearly put that poor rattly truck into the underpass.

Within days we had a two book publishing contract on the table. The day she rang to tell me that, it was my birthday and I was in the supermarket shopping. I screamed into the nearest grocery stack, which just happened to be the toilet rolls. Needless to say, the shopping consisted of all things celebratory (and a few mushed up toilet rolls)

What inspired you to write Bella’s Run?

Inspiration for people to do things beyond what they would normally do comes from a variety of different sources. For me, the inspiration to write – to weave stories about the bush – comes from my surroundings. From the environment in which I live – the mountains and farming in particular – because that is what I truly love and am passionate about. As a child I rode my horse through the hills surrounding our farm every weekend. And now we, as a family, spend a lot of time in the high country above our home. A very rugged and beautiful place where we track and watch brumbies, ride motorbikes and horses in the bush. Nearly four years and what seems like a lifetime ago, this landscape proved to be my inspiration for BELLA’S RUN.

What things in life are most important to you?

The themes of BELLA’S RUN are friendship, the search for love and the place you can call home. These are all portrayed within the evocative setting of the Australian bush giving you (I hope), a vivid sense of place with authentic characters that you the reader ‘know’. I tell you this because personally, these themes are very important to me.

My family – an amazing husband, three beautiful children plus my wonderful father, brother, sister and their families, aunts, uncles and cousins – along with my fantastic and supportive friends, are my world. I would not survive without them all. They give me the love, strength and energy to live, love and write.

The Osborn family has also been on the same property here for 150 years, giving me a very strong sense of place.  Our roots sink deeply into the soil. This grounds a person, gives the feeling of belonging and community.

Country life is me. I see it, I hear it, I work it and breathe it everyday. I have lived and worked on properties all my life. Throw me into suburbia and I am like a floundering fish. All I long for is my work-boots, the scent of cow-shit, sunshine on the breeze, musky soil and tangy eucalyptus. Ridiculous I know, but to take me from the land – from the bush – would starve my soul.

Thank you Margareta, for sharing your story with us. Margareta’s new novel, Hope’s Road will be released in March 2013.