Today we welcome Susanne Bellamy to the blog. Born and raised in Toowoomba, Susanne is an Aussie author of rural romance set in Australia. She also writes contemporary and suspense romances set in exciting and often exotic locations. She adores travel with her husband, both at home and overseas, and weaves stories around the settings and people she encounters. Mentoring aspiring writers, and working as a freelance editor keeps Susanne off the street!

Our country has stunning landscapes, which often become characters in their own right. Sometimes, so too do animals, especially in rural-set fiction.

Back in the dark ages when I was a child, we had budgies and a small bitsa dog my mother named Tiger. My husband is a dog lover with a particular fondness for German Shepherds. Cats send my husband into a sneezing frenzy and are to be avoided at all costs so we have always been a ‘dog family’.

We’ve had several Shepherds, starting with Ricky (Houdini hound extraordinaire) through to our current queen of the house, Freya. Then there was Clyde, the Welsh Springer spaniel with a talent for escaping so he could go scrub-bashing through the bush at the bottom of our property. He had such flexible paws that he actually climbed the fence!

Our string of dogs is a large part of why I often grant my characters the joy of a canine companion.

After the passing of our lovely Anna (Freya’s great-aunt), I wrote a short story in which she was the star who brought the protagonists together. Anna had such a beautiful nature and giving her a story of her own was a way of dealing with the grief of losing her. Second Chance Café.

Anna also inspired scenes between Paul, the hero of Starting Over, and his elderly collie, Jack. I still cry when I read those scenes, drawn from my grief in losing Anna.

In my newly released In the Heat of the Night (Bindarra Creek A Town Reborn), my heroine’s brother, Nico, is the dog lover. Thalia’s Greek migrant family owns the Cyprus Café in the heart of town, and Zeus is lost and lonely when his master ends up in hospital.

Zeus, Nico’s German Shepherd, trotted behind her, dropped and rested his head on Thalia’s feet. He whimpered, the sound echoing Thalia’s sense of Nico’s absence.

She bent down and stroked his head. “You’re missing him too, aren’t you, boy? I’ll take you for a walk later.”

Most of my stories are set in small town Australia, rural settings where animals are part of the life of the community. From the poddy calf in Hard Road Home, and the horses of Sarah, the endurance rider in Long Way Home to pets like Zeus and Anna, animals are special characters that enrich the lives of their owners and entertain readers.

Here’s a snippet of Hughie, the poddy calf:

Geilis shooed the poddy calf back through the broken fence and looked for a simple means to keep the fallen picket upright while she walked all the way to the work shed, retrieved tools and came back—on the quad bike next time. “I really don’t have time for this, little fella, so please, just stay there while I—” She grabbed a branch and rammed it into the hard dirt before angling it towards the picket. It held . . . for all of three seconds before the inquisitive calf nosed at her work. She jumped backwards as both branch and picket fell with dull thuds. “Drat and double drat.”

“Is that worse than a single damn?” Rick’s amused voice sounded nearby.
          Slapping her hands on her hips she faced him, embarrassment warring with mild relief. If she left the calf while she walked back to the shed, he’d be goodness knew where by the time she got back to the fence. In amongst the vines most likely. “See if you can do better—or, better still, why don’t you go back and get tools to fix this while I spend some time explaining to Hughie here why he isn’t allowed this side of the fence.”
          The calf nudged her in the backside and she turned and shooed him back into his paddock. Picking up the fallen picket she tried to hold it in place as the calf mooed in complaint.
          “Hughie?” Rick tipped his head and eyed off the calf determinedly pushing against her hand.
          “Yeah, like Hugh Hefner. The grass is always greener and all that.”
          Rick turned his attention to the fallen fence, picked up the branch and threaded it through the wires. He thrust the end of the branch into the picket hole with a thud. Eyeing off the calf, he fixed it with a stern look. “No touching that, Hughie-boy, unless you want to find out what prairie oysters mean. Got it?”
          The calf mooed as though it understood and trotted away.
Hard Road Home

If you like what you’ve read, please check out my books HERE.

Discover more about Australasian rural authors at our Australian & NZ Rural Fiction website!