Scorching Heat; it must be Christmas! by Fiona Lowe

I am just back from my first foray to the shops for Christmas. Usually, I start in November but this year I was on a nine day bike ride (300+ miles!!/591km) and I have come back to discover I usually do a LOT of preparation during that last week of November.

My key to Christmas shopping is two-fold. 1. On-line shop as much as you can. 2.If I need to go to the mall I go early ; in by 9AM and out by 11AM. As The Lad (18 year old son) and I walked out of the mall today, we walked into a wall of heat. Ah, it must be Christmas.

My husband and Boy Wonder (14) made an early trip and bought the Christmas tree because tomorrow they will all be wilted after today's scorcher of 102F. The house smells of pine and again, I know it must be getting close to Christmas.

I've shared three phone calls and five text messages with my sister so far today...again, another sign Christmas is coming!

I also have a Christmas novel out! Newborn Baby For Christmas which is a modern take on the original Christmas story. It's lots of fun...there is a family reunion (census), no room at the inn, three wise men and a virgin birth ;-) It's got it all and it's set in Australia so a heap of Aussie Christmas traditions are thrown in there as well. Please do check out the link because 'Down Under' our Christmas is a little different from friends who live in the northern hemisphere and I've described them along with some recipes!

Of course, I PINE for my northern hemisphere Christmases where all the traditions made made sense. I wrote about them in my Rita winning novel, Boomerang Bride, which is coming out in trade paperback in the USA on December 18th! just in time for Christmas :-) It's on sale right now at Amazon.

Also, talking recipes, the wonderful folk at Carina Press  who published Boomerang Bride have put together a holiday recipe book and it's free HERE as a pdf so Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a happy and healthy festive season and I hope you get to spend time with the people you wish to spend time with!

Please take care, travel safely, hug the ones you love, spare a thought for those less fortunate and I hope your stockings are overflowing with great books!
Fiona xxx

It's Easter Monday 'DownUnder' which is a public holiday. Many people get five days off over Easter..that's a big break and the retailers know it. For a month before Easter the junk mail is FULL of camping equipment sales and DIY sales. In the past we've done both of those things. We've often painted bedrooms, completed a big garden project. We've also gone camping. This year we took a road trip to visit my cousins in South Australia...the state next door. 

We also used it as an opportunity to visit Adelaide University. My eldest son will be off to uni/college next year and he's keeping his options open and we've been visiting quite a few places! It was also a chance for him to get more kilometres/miles under his belt driving because where we live he has to have driven 120 hours before he can sit his driver's test.


It was great catching up with family and seeing the cousins playing together.  I was able to share my exciting news with them and I want to share it here with you too!  Two weeks ago, I woke up to hear my iPad going ping, ping, ping. I stumbled out into the kitchen and read, 'Congratulations on your #Rita12 nomination.' My heart almost stopped and I automatically looked toward the phone to see if the message bank was blinking. Had I missed a phone call in the middle of the night telling me this news? 

Somehow I managed to get my fingers to work and I found the RWA list and yes, there under Single Title Contemporary Romance was my name and next to it was Boomerang Bride. I rang Angela James, the Chief Executive Editor of Carina Press and she told me I was the first Carina Press author to be nominated for a RITA^®  SQUEE!! For those of you who don't know about the RITA^®,  it is the Romance Writers of Amercia's award for published authors. My peers had read this book and deemed it worthy of being nominated.


This is a really special nomination for so many reasons, including the fact this book took a long time to find a home. It shares my love tor Australia and my love for the USA. It combines all the wonderful things about small towns in both countries and I just loved writing it. To read more about it including the song that inspired it, click here.

To celebrate my nomination, I'd love to give away an eBook version of Boomerang Bride.  To be in with a chance to win, tell me how you celebrated Easter this year. Remember to leave your email address in the comment in case you win!  

If you'd like to buy your own copy of Boomerang Bride it is available as a physical book and and an eBook

Fiona Lowe is an award-winning, multi-published author with Harlequinand Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or in the mid-west of the USA, they feature small towns with big hearts, and warm, likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she's not writing stories, she's a weekend wife, mother of two 'ginger' teenage boys, guardian of 80 rose bushes and often found collapsed on the couch. A current RT Book Reviwers' Choice Award nominee, you  can find her at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Boomerang Bride is available now from Carina Press,Amazon Kindle, Nook and all other online book stores

Fiona Lowe: I've Got to Go There!

OK, so I confess to watching 'A Farmer Wants a Wife' and last year one of the Aussie farmers was a pearl farmer living on the Western Australian coast, and the images of the area just blew me away.

The blue-green sea, water so clear you could see dugong, turtles, mantarays, massive schools of fish from the top of a cliff and the most amazing sight of red, outback dust suddenly changing to whiter than white sand are images that are burned into my brain. It was a place where the outback meets the ocean and the perfect place to take a French exchange student so he could experience both the outback and glorious beaches. I started planning a vacation!

We're just back from that holiday and it was spectacular. We were in the World Heritage listed Shark Bay and the recently listed Ningaloo reef and I got to swim with whale sharks, which was something I had never imagined myself doing. The experience will stay with me forever. There is something about swimming next to an 8 metre fish that makes you realise how tiny we really are!


Of course we wanted to visit this part of the world and we were open to everything, but it's different when you're 'told' you have to go somewhere or 'do' something. In my latest release, Career Girl In The Country, Poppy Stanfield is told she has to go to the outback and work in a mining town.

It isn't in a World Heritage area with amazing sceneary and it's a two hour flght from Perth. With the never-ending rest dust and the searing temperatures, Poppy feels like she's been sent to hell. She's determined to get out of town as soon as possible and back to her life in Perth, and her career dreams of being the head of surgery in a Perth hospital.

Nothing goes to plan and slowly, despite not wanting to, she starts to see beyond the moon-scape environment and starts to glimpse some positive attributes to the town; not to mention the gorgous but brooding ER doctor, Matt Albright.

So tell me, what situation have you been in where you were told to do something or told to go somewhere that you didn't wish to, but ultimately you realised it had been a good experience for you? Leave a comment and go into the draw to win a copy of Career Girl In The Country!

Fiona Lowe is an award-winning, multipublished author or romance fiction with Harlequin Mills & Boon and Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or small-town USA they all feature small towns with big hearts fillled with warm, likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she's not writing stories, she's a weekend wife, mother of two boys who she's trying to instill in them heroic charcteristics like cooking and ironing. She's currently writing her 18th novel. She loves to hear from readers and you can find her on Facebook, Twitter and at her website.

Frocks, Horses and 150 Years of History - Fiona Lowe

While Americans have been voting, Australians have been partying! All this week in my state of Victoria, it's the Spring Racing Carnival.

For weeks, women have been preparing their outfits and hoping to take out the covetted, 'Fashion on the Fields' prize. Today is 'Oaks Day' otherwise known as 'Ladies Day' and women are flocking to Flemington in their frocks and fascinators, sipping champagne and trying to stay in their high heels until at least 3pm:-)

Saturday was Derby Day, where the men wear morning suits and top hats and look splendidly dapper, but it is Tuesday, the first Tuesday of November that is the ultimate day in the Spring Racing Carnival calendar; Melbourne Cup.

Such is our love affair with the Melbourne Cup that all Melbourne residents get a public holiday!! But the allure for 'The Cup' isn't limited to Victoria alone, and it is known as the 'race that stops a nation.' For three minutes, all around the country all eyes are glued to the race ,and ears to the radio...after all, three quarters of the adult population of the country have placed a bet on it!

And to be truthful, the nation stops for longer than three minutes as there are office parties and lunches with hat competitions and sweeps, as the festival rolls around the country.

The best horse flesh from around the world comes 'down under' to compete in one of the longest races in the world along with massive prize money. As we are so far away from Europe and NA, often a local horse wins and hopes were high given it is the 150th celebration of 'The Cup' this year. But it wasn't to be.

A French horse called Americain won by a goodly distance. I so should have taken more notice of this horse because it won my hometown cup two weeks ago and my son is currently in France so how is that for an omen?

As a child Cup Day meant going sailing with my father, as an adult and not living in Melbourne, it means lunch with my tennis team.

Cup Day is always a prompt to me that Christmas is 8 weeks away and it's time to cut up my Christmas cake fruit and soak it in whiskey, rum, brandy, vanilla and lemon essence for a month before baking it on December 1st. It's also the time the junk mail quadruples and we start reading catalogues looking for Christmas gift ideas.

And this year, Cup Day was the day my latest book was released; The Most Magical Gift of All. It's a Christmas story set in the outback and Jack and Sophie have very different plans for Christmas but the universe has a plan of its own. I had so much fun writing this and filling it with lots of Aussie Christmas tradtions.

So do you have a favourite tradition during the year? It might be a holiday for a horse race or perhaps you celebrate change of seasons in your own particular way?

Leave a comment telling me and you'll go into the draw for a copy of The Most Magical Gift of All. To be in with a second chance of wining a copy or a backstory book of your choice, join my Facebook Page.

Fiona Lowe is an Australian Author who writes small town romances with a big heart.

The Most Magical Gift of All is out now at eharlequin, Mills and Boon UK and Mills and Boon Australia and The Book Depository in Paperback and E book format. For information about Fiona and her books head to her website.