The story’s working title is ‘Echoes of Daniel’ (thanks, Jenn, for brainstorming that!) and it’s a romantic suspense – and yes, it was a challenge writing a romantic suspense story in 1500 words! But a fun challenge, once the idea came to me

The major news is that, after months of struggling with it, my publisher, agent and I have decided that the book I was drafting and redrafting and redrafting – the third Dungirri book – just isn’t going to work at this point. Yes, that was a hard decision to make, and I know some readers are going to be disappointed (part of me is, too), but I know that it’s the right decision for now. It took me some days to come to terms with it; it’s very hard to let go of a book and characters that I’ve been working on for a long time! However, my plans now are to power on with a brand new book – new characters, new setting, new story – but at some stage, once that’s finished, I probably will write the third Dungirri book – although how, when and where it will be published I don’t yet know.

Now I’ve got past the disappointment stage, I can confess I’m feeling excited again – I’m no longer struggling to push a story uphill, and I can enjoy the thrill of starting a new idea. While I haven’t actually written a heap of the new book yet, I have the beginning, and the hero and heroine have been taking shape in my mind. I like them They’re not perfect; they each have some flaws or edges that should make them interesting. I think I’ve also worked out the initial crime and the person behind it, and yes, that will keep my protagonists on their toes! No news on publication date, yet, but probably mid-late next year. (I know, it’s a long wait. I’m sorry about that. But since I have major surgery ahead, and we can’t guarantee how much concentration I’ll be able to focus on writing in the next few months, we can’t commit to earlier than that.)

The weekend before last, G and I went for a long drive, partly to visit an area which I wondered about for the setting of the new book. Plus, we like driving through wilderness areas. By the end of the day, I’d decided that the setting wasn’t quite right for this book – I envisage it further west – but we had a lovely day out, anyway.

We drove north and a little west, up to the tiny community of Torrington, where we drove down the main road:

and conversed with some of the residents:

(The road through Torrington is also a common, where the cattle calmly graze.)

We then wound our way through the eastern edge of the Torrington Conservation Area (not quite a National Park, but similar):

which is granite country, rugged and rocky:

Then on through the rolling hills of the tablelands, up to within coo-ee of the Queensland border:

We then travelled west along the Bruxner Highway for a half-hour so, before turning south and coming home via Ashford and Inverell – but the wind was chilly, so I didn’t hop out and take any more photos!

Although the Torrington area is a wonderful place, this new book is telling me that it wants to be set further west. So, I’ll probably have to plan another trip or two soon; perhaps a couple of nights away, to revisit some places I’ve been to numerous times before, but this time with a writer’s eye.

in the meantime, I’ve got two new characters to get to know even better… and I’m thoroughly enjoying that!

Dark Country is a finalist in the Romantic Elements category of the Romance Writers of Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year!

Although coordinated by RWAustralia, the R*BY is judged by readers, not writers, so it’s wonderful to know that Dark Country resonates with the people who matter most! Huge thanks to all the readers who took the time to judge R*BY entries and provide their feedback – it wouldn’t happen without you!

The winners of the four categories will be announced at the awards dinner at the Romance Writers of Australia conference at Coogee on August 14th.

Congratulations to all the finalists – there’s a fantastic list of books there! And a special shout-out to fellow Aust Outback Romances author, Fleur McDonald, who is a finalist in the same category as me, and also to Kelly Hunter, my good friend who lives in my area, and is a fellow RITA finalist this year. The full list of finalists isn’t up on the website just yet, but here it is:

Short Sweet Category:
Sharon Archer – Marriage Reunited: Baby On The Way
Sharon Archer – Single Father: Wife And Mother Wanted
CC Coburn – Colorado Christmas
Emily Forbes – Wanted: A Father For Her Twins

Short Sexy Category:
Amy Andrews – A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby
Robyn Grady – Bedded By Blackmail
Kelly Hunter – Playboy Boss, Live-in Mistress
Tessa Radley – Billion-Dollar Baby Bargain

Romantic Elements Category:
Fleur McDonald – Red Dust
Tracey O’Hara – Night’s Cold Kiss
Bronwyn Parry – Dark Country
Katherine Scholes – The Hunter’s Wife

Long Romance Category:
Sophia James – Mistletoe Magic
Stephanie Laurens – Mastered By Love
Stephanie Laurens – Temptation And Surrender
Christine Wells – Wicked Little Game

The Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in mystery/suspense is run by the Romance Writers of America Kiss of Death Chapter , and there are six categories for published books; Dark Country has finalled in the Single Title Romantic Mystery/Suspense category.

It’s a wonderful honour to be a finalist in this prestigious contest; for romantic suspense writers, it’s second only to the RWAmerica RITAs and the ITW Thriller Awards in the international contests. So, I’ve been wearing out my smile muscles (again!) since reading the email yesterday.

The winners of the Awards are announced on Thursday 29th July at the RWAmerica conference in Orlando; the Kiss of Death Chapter hosts a wonderful Death by Chocolate party that evening (and wow, is there serious chocolate!), and the Awards are announced at the party. Sadly, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I won’t be able to attend the RWAmerica conference this year, due to upcoming major surgery, but I’m sure all my fellow finalists and KOD members will have a fantastic night! Hopefully, I’ll be recovered enough to indulge in some chocolate to share the celebration, albeit from a considerable distance! (Hmmm… there’s a Max Brenner Chocolate Bar not far from the hospital – I may have to send Gordon out to bring me a little treat!)

The full list of finalists is below – my congratulations to all of them! It’s fantastic to be included in such a list of great authors, and my thanks go to the judges and contest coordinators for making the contest possible.

CATEGORY (SERIES) ROMANTIC MYSTERY/SUSPENSE
Trusting a Stranger by Kerry Connor
The Christmas Stranger by Beth Cornelison
Burning Secrets by Elizabeth Sinclair
Cold Case Affair by Loreth Anne White
More than a Man by Rebecca York

HISTORICAL ROMANTIC MYSTERY/SUSPENSE
Alaskan Renegade by Kate Bridges
The Club by Sharon Page
From Waif to Gentleman’s Wife by Janet Justiss
The Nude by Dorothy McFalls
The Rake’s Inherited Courtesan – by Ann Lethbridge

INSPIRATIONAL ROMANTIC MYSTERY/SUSPENSE
Against All Odds by Irene Hannon
An Eye for an Eye by Irene Hannon
A Prisoner of Versailles by Golden Keyes Parsons
Final Exposure by Roxanne Rustand
Scent of Murder by Virginia Smith

MAINSTREAM MYSTERY/SUSPENSE
Missing Mark by Julia Kramer
Urgent Care by CJ Lyons
Warning Signs CJ Lyons
Breakneck by Erica Spindler
The Girl on Legare Street by Karen White

PARANORMAL ROMANTIC MYSTERY/SUSPENSE:
Midnight’s Master Cynthia Eden
A Highlander of Her Own by Melissa Mayhue
Desire Untamed by Pamela Palmer
Heart Change by Robin D. Owens
Dragon Moon by Rebecca York

SINGLE TITLE ROMANTIC MYSTERY/SUSPENSE (TIE)
Fatal Secrets by Allison Brennan
If Looks Could Chill by Nina Bruhns
Feel the Heat by Cindy Gerard
Untraceable by Laura Griffin
Dark Country by Bronwyn Parry
Hunt Her Down by Roxanne St. Claire

Sadly, I have forgotten most of the German that I learned in High School, so I won’t mangle a fine language by attempting to use it – however, I have added a page for Schwarze Dornen, with the publisher’s description, and there is a link to download the first chapters from the Blanvalet website.

Although I haven’t (yet!) been to the German-speaking areas of Europe (other than a brief stopover in Vienna), I have met many wonderful German visitors while travelling in regional and outback Australia – so I do hope that German readers enjoy visiting Dungirri in the pages of Schwarze Dornen.

Members of the RWA Board have the very pleasant task of contacting the finalists by phone to notify them, although its such a thundering honour to final, that they probably get ear damage from all the squeeing! The calls are supposed to start at about 8am on Thursday morning, US time – but since that’s the wee small hours Australian time, some of the board members phone Australian finalists early, while we’re still awake on our side of the world – although the finalists are supposed to keep it to themselves until the ‘official’ calling time begins.

Before I went to bed last night, there were already a few unofficial announcements on Australian loops, and I was thrilled to see two friends are RITA finalists, and to hear of at least three Golden Heart finalists. Australians are usually well-represented in the finalist lists, and this year is looking good, too!

Of course, I’d been hoping for the phone to ring all afternoon, as Dark Country was entered in the RITAs. But alas, it stayed silent. It was a slim chance, I knew, and I hadn’t been holding my breath. So I went to bed about 11pm, but lay awake for a while, finally drifting off at about midnight.

The phone woke me at 12.22am. And it wasn’t someone from Gordon’s work with a network breakdown. It was a lovely lady from RWAmerica, to tell me that Dark Country is a finalist in the romantic suspense category of the RITAs!

It’s now 1.30am, and I’m still grinning from ear to ear, and unlikely to go back to sleep for a while!

I’ll put up a full list of Australian RITA and GH finalists later today, when they’re all announced.

ETA: The full lists of finalists are now on the RWAmerica website – RITA Finalists and Golden Heart Finalists.

Super congrats to all the finalists in both awards! And special congratulations to the Australian finalists: in the RITAs, Elizabeth Rolls, and Kelly Hunter; and in the Golden Heart, Kylie Griffin, Vanessa Barneveld, Gabrielly Luthy, and Robyn Enlund.

That’s three Australians (including me) in the RITAs and four in the Golden Heart – what a great showing, Australia!

I know that’s going to be a little disappointing for some of you wonderful readers, but we felt that a good book, published a little later, was far, far better than a rushed book published earlier. And, since I have to have another medical procedure in late March, it does save us all from the risk of trying to fit revisions and copy-edits around recovery time! Hopefully the procedure will go wonderfully well and only involve a couple of nights in hospital, and I’ll be able to get right back into polishing First Light, but there is a risk of complications, so, while I’m a little disappointed about the publishing delay, I’m also relieved, too, as it lifts most of the pressure and stress.

Once First Light is finished and in, I’ll be able to get going on the next series! I’m currently not letting myself think too much about it, because I don’t want to get distracted from Dungirri, but the fun of creating a new community and new characters will I hope lessen the sadness of saying farewell to Dungirri. But before I leap into the new series, I might just polish up a couple of Dungirri short story ideas that have been floating in my head for a while – and perhaps those will make the wait for First Light a little easier!

If Australian readers have already read Dark Country, then keep an eye out for Helene Young’s Border Watch, which will be released here in March. I’ve been lucky enough to read a proof copy of this, and it’s a great read – suspense, romance, planes, and the far North Queensland land & seascapes. Congratulations, Helene, on a fantastic debut novel!

Back in 2008, when I went to the RWAmerica conference in San Francisco, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting writer and knitter Rachael Herron. Rachael took me and a couple of other knitting writers around some SF yarn shops, and a great day was had by all of us. A day or so later, at the conference itself, I bumped into Rachael in the coffee queue, and so we sat together and had a great chat before she headed off for a pitch appointment with an editor. Now, I can’t remember which editor she pitched to then, but not long afterwards a very sensible one offered her a publishing contract – and Rachael’s first book will be published in March, in both the US and here in Australia. However, in one of those quirks of publishing and marketing, in the US it’s titled ‘How to Knit a Love Song’ – and in Australia it’s called ‘Eliza’s Gift’.

So, there you going – some great reading for March!

(And there’s more coming up in April, but I’ll leave that for another post…)

But I do get up early sometimes, and once I’ve convinced the brain and the wanting-to-close eyes that it’s okay to actually be awake, I can almost enjoy early mornings. If I go outside, I love them.

This morning, I was out before sunrise. We woke about 5.30am; it was light outside, but the soft, pearly light before the sun is visible. I took the camera out. The frogs were croaking away quite loudly in the dam – we’ve had rain recently, and they’re still singing about that, with all their little froggy hearts. The air was still, and while it wasn’t exactly quiet, with the frogs singing and the choughs squawking amongst the trees, there was a sense of quiet, each sound distinct in the stillness.

Our place is surrounded by bush; at that time of morning, the trees are silhouetted against the sky. A patch of lighter sky, low on the eastern horizon, signals the coming sun.

To the west, the sky has a soft pink edge to it, reflecting the new light.

The sun breaks above the horizon of distant trees, and the light transforms from pink, through apricot, to gold:

..and its rays scatter through the trees, catching some of them in shafts of gold:

So, why, I hear you ask, did I get up early this morning? To take photos And why did I want to take photos? To put on my blog.

And why is today’s blog about the early morning?

Because it seemed like a good way to create an atmosphere for my readers, in which I can announce that my publisher and I have decided that the title for my third book in the Dungirri series will be: First Light.

I love the title. It fits well with the As Darkness Falls and Dark Country, and completes the arc, from the fall of night, through the darkness, to the fresh promise of a new day.

Now I just have to finish writing it…

The cover is quite striking, although very different from both the Australian and UK editions:

While the image isn’t directly related to events in the book, I think it does effectively create a sense of menace in conflict with the natural world, which does reflect some of the themes of the book. Plus, it does catch the eye, and will make the book stand out on the shelves and tempt a reader to pick it up – and that is what a cover image is supposed to do, so therefore I like it!

The title translates (I’m pretty sure) to ‘Black Thorns’. It’s not unusual for a foreign-language edition to have a different title; translation is not as simple as just replacing words with their equivalent ones in the other language. Sometimes there isn’t an equivalent word, and many factors are taken into account; the style of the writing, the sound and rhythm of words, their meanings and subtleties within the language, the culture and cultural references, and, of course, what will appeal to the book-buying public! Schwarze Dornen sounds strong, and is probably easily remembered, plus it evokes a sense of the atmosphere of the book, so I think it’s a good title for those reasons!