Pages

Showing posts with label R*BY Awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label R*BY Awards. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Spring is here Downunder!

My boys have just headed back to school after our 'spring break'. We have four school terms here, broken up with a two week break between terms 1, 2 & 3 and then six weeks summer vacation after term four.
We took a mini trip during the break, funnily enough to visit Kandy Sheperd who blogged yesterday! It was so great to visit her and her lovely husband and to meet the cats and horses she often blogs about.

On the last day of our trip, we visited The Royal National Park in Sydney. Back in the 1870s, when this park was declared, I am sure it was in the middle of nowhere, but now it is surrounded by the southern suburbs of Sydney and on a public holiday, everyone was there taking advantage of having rugged coastal  beaches and glorious bush right on their doorstep.

And the flowers were out. I wanted to share some of them with you....
This is a Waratah and it is also the state flower of New South Wales. My photography doesn't show off how big the flowers really are but they are about 4 inches across and a glorious maroon red. They last in a vase for about six weeks. I love them but it is a bit too cool for them to grow where I live.

This is pink heath. Although I took this photo in New South Wales, it is the state flower of my state, Victoria.


Sorry, I have no clue what this is but it's pretty, right ? ;-)
 This is flower eucalpyt. Eucalyptus trees can flower in white, red or even orange, depending on the sub species.



I have exhausted my knowledge here but wanted to share them all with you.
So tell me, what is your favourite local flower? Or what is your state flower? I would love to know!

Fiona Lowe is a RITA®  and R*BY award-winning, multi-published author with Harlequin and 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 with wine. Yyou can find her at her website, facebookTwitter and Goodreads.


Her Christmas novel, NewBorn Baby For Christmas is up for pre-order now


Saturday, June 13, 2009

The 2009 R*BY Awards

by Anna Campbell

I had a lovely thrill last week. They announced the finalists in the Australian and New Zealand Romantic Book of the Year Awards (the R*BY) and my green monster, UNTOUCHED, is one of four finalists in the Long Romance category.

This not only means I have a chance at winning the spectacular glass trophy pictured on the left. It also means quite a lot of local publicity through Woman's Day, one of the sponsors, and the chance to write a short story for them. When I finaled last year with CLAIMING THE COURTESAN, my short story THE RETURN was published in the magazine, which is Australia's most popular. You can read THE RETURN here.

There's some really great books in the running this year. I'm flattered and proud to be counted in their number.

Here's a list of the other finalists:

SHORT SWEET CATEGORY:
Claire Baxter - The Single Dad's Patchwork Family
Melissa James - A Mother in a Million
Marion Lennox - His Island Bride
Fiona McArthur - The Midwife's Baby

SHORT SEXY CATEGORY:
Miranda Lee - The Millionaire's Inexperienced Love Slave
Carol Marinelli - Expecting His Love Child
Trish Morey - The Italian Boss's Mistress of Revenge
Paula Roe - Boardrooms and a Billionaire Heir

LONG ROMANCE CATEGORY:
Karina Bliss - Second Chance Family
Anna Campbell - Untouched
Anne Gracie - The Stolen Princess
Elizabeth Rolls - A Compromised Lady

ROMANTIC ELEMENTS CATEGORY:
Maggie Alderson - How to Break Your Own Heart
Bronwyn Parry - As Darkness Falls
Suzanne Perazzini - Beneath The Surface
Suzanne Perazzini - Crash into Darkness

Congratulations to all the R*BY finalists and good luck for the winner announcements at the gala awards dinner at the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Brisbane in August.

So that got me thinking about my best read in the last year. And I realized there were too many for me to choose just one. I wondered if you had a favorite recent read. I'm always looking to add to my towering TBR pile.