Telling It in Pictures by Fiona Lowe

My husband is a pretty good photographer. Let me qualify that. He is an awesome scenic photographer. Take him anywhere and he will capture the essence of the place he is standing with his camera. People photos? Not so much. I have an 'aim and shoot' for that and even so, we're lacking in family photos. I took us to a professional photographer a few years ago. Hmm, must be time to do that again. But I digress, back to the scenic photos.

We have a huge wall in our kitchen and on it we 'cycle' many of his photographs, six at a time. (sorry, I can't seem to take the photo without a shadow from the skylight)  The photo wall is a fabulous talking point when visitors come. We get them to guess where each of the six photos have been taken. I'm wondering if you can?

It might be a tad tricky but the top left is a picture of terraced rice paddies in Bali, the deck chairs are Blackpool Pier in the UK, the middle top is Maine in fall,  and underneath is the stunning Peyto Lake in the Canadian Rockies. The top right is one of my favourites and hard for you to see but its fall in Wisconsin...red barn, turning trees, harvested hay and a trip of still green corn. Gorgeous!  

So it was a logical progression with all these great photos to use them on my new website.  I'm thrilled with the way each book has its own banner, using a photo that represents where the book is set. For instance, Career Girl in the Country is set in Western Australia and here is Sturt Desert Pea taken on the side of the road in WA.

Boomerang Bride, my RT, RITA® and RuBY nominated book is set in Wisconsin so of course, I had to have a red barn!

My most recent Medical Romance, Sydney Harbour Hospital: Tom's Redemption is set in Sydney, Australia and we gave the banner a new twist. Here it is...we are standing next to one of the Opera House sails with the distinctive bridge in the distance.

I hope you enjoy the photos and that they enable you to get a feel for my stories. Meanwhile, I'll work on my dear husband to take a photo of me with my RITA® pin! Maybe if I dress up like a tree, it might help!


How do you display your photos?

Fiona Lowe is an 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. A current RITA nominee, you  can find her at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Call it coincidence – by Kandy Shepherd

Coincidence? Wish fulfillment? Who knows—but fictional incidents I create for my novels have a habit of actually happening in my own life!

DREAM HOUSE COME TRUE

In my contemporary romance, Something About Joe, my heroine Allison Bradley lives in a charming little terrace house (row house) in McMahons Point, a harborside suburb of Sydney, Australia, ten minutes from the city center where she works.

At the time I wrote the story, I lived in an outer suburb, considerably more than ten minutes from where I worked. In fact, to get into the city for my “day job”, I had to get up at the crack of dawn (I’m an “owl” and loathe getting up early) and dress my daughter while she was still asleep to get her to daycare and me to the office on time.

I wove my yearning for a closer-to-town home into the story, living it vicariously through the house I created for Allison. Who would have imagined some years later we would find a decrepit, uninhabitable little house in McMahons Point, spend several years renovating it, and move in.

A house something like the one I created for Allison in SOMETHING ABOUT JOE

Yes, it was every bit as convenient to live there for me as it was for Alison.

No, a hot handsome hunk of a babysitter like my hero Joe Martin never came knocking on my door!

(If there are any more dream houses going to come true for me, there’s the most perfect house in Sausalito, California, I created for my hero in Home Is Where the Bark Is… )

HARBORSIDE PLAYGROUND

In Something About Joe, two pivotal scenes take place in a small harborside park in McMahon’s Point. There’s a park bench there and in my mind’s eye, I can see my fictional characters Joe and Allison sitting there together.

The view of Sydney Harbour Joe and Allison see from the park

Long after the book was written I found myself spending happy hours right near that bench teaching my daughter to jump rope (or skipping rope as it’s called in Australia) with magnificent Sydney Harbour as our backdrop and backyard substitute. I could never have imagined that! 

MORE NIGHTMARE THAN DREAM

Spoiler alert! There’s a scene in Something About Joe where Allison’s eighteen-month old son Mitchell suffers a febrile convulsion and ends up in the emergency room at the local hospital.

I thoroughly researched the symptoms and the hospital procedure. Lucky I did, because several years after writing the scene with Mitchell, a high fever triggered a terrifying series of convulsions in my daughter (long after the age my research told me was usual) and I knew exactly what to do. I also got all the details of what happens at the hospital right, though to tell you the truth I wasn't thinking about my story when I was there with my daughter! (She was fine, with no after effects at all, thank heaven.)

No febrile convulsions for this happy baby!

Has anything quite unexpectedly come true for you? Something you dreamed about, longed for, read in a book or saw in a movie, heard about from someone else?

Leave a comment to win a free download of my new e-book Something About Joe. Be sure to include your email address.

Something About Joe is available for just $0.99c at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and other e-retailers.

Kandy Shepherd writes fun, feel-good fiction.
www.kandyshepherd.com

Sydney Harbour Bridge photo © Deb22 http://www.stockfreeimages.com

Baby photo © Melkinghttp://www.stockfreeimages.com