Whether you're in the deserts of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico or Australia, the heat, the dust and the isolation are the same. Oh and the bugs! Weird and wonderful, annoying bugs ;-)
Standing in a desert, surrounded by the low foliage, you can't help but get a sense that nature is so much stronger than you. The sun is so hot, the place is so dry and as everything looks the same, it's easy to get lost.
But for all that overwhelms me about the Outback and the desert, there is also so many things that fascinate me and one of them is why these places even got settled back in the 1800s when there was no electricity, no telephone, no permanent water supply and no aircon!
Today there's still a mystical quality to these isolated places and they make the perfect backdrop to a romance novel! For the first time for my USA readers, Harlequin have bundled four of my books together in an anthology called Fiona Lowe's Weddings. Three book are set in the Outback...and one in Vietnam!
The Warragurra Duo, Wedding in Warragurra & The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal are set in the Australian Outback in a town with a Flying Doctor's base. It's a land of blazing summers and bitterly cold winters, populated
by people who live on hope and faith and are frequently battered by the elements.
In
Wedding In Warragurrra, Dr. Baden Tremont is committed to raising his tween daughter and never expected love to strike twice. Sarah Lawson thought she'd loved once before but living in a town who blames her for the death of the local sports hero , she's not prepared to love again. Slowly, they find their way forward by honouring the past and embracing the future.
In book two of the Warragurra books, red dust meets city smog. Emily Tippet with her pink hair, baggy clothes and an ability to hot-wire a car or tractor, brand cattle and shoot a mean game of pool, is an enigma to Sydney playboy doctor, Linton Gregory. He's never met anyone like her or her close and loving family. With her four brothers and a father, dating Emily is like having to deal with five fathers. I had so much fun getting dust on Linton's Italian loafers and forcing Emily out of her comfort clothes and revealing her true self to the world.
The Surgeon's Chosen Wife is set in tropical Queensland, the absolute opposite of the dry inland with its lush bougainvillaea, mango-laden trees, sweltering humidity and massive rainfall. I love the old Queenslander homesteads on their stilts and in this novel, the house became a character in its own right as Ryan Harrison, former surgeon, returns unhappily to Yakkaburra to recuperate from a near-death experience. His neighbour is Sarah Rigby, single mum and the town's GP who'd gone to school with him. Ryan can't fathom why she didn't run screaming from town years ago like he did. I love this story with the theme of healing both physically and emotionally, plus I got to include a gorgeous dog, a kelpie-bordercollie cross, who was based on the wonderful Meg, who sadly passed away a few weeks ago.
The final book in the anthology is a novel that had the working title, "The Vietnam Book." Now titled,
A Woman To Belong To, it is set all over the beautiful country of Vietnam. Dr Tom Bracken was a 'cardboard box baby, flown out of Vietnam at Saigon fell in 1975. Now he's working in Hanoi and trying to find his birth mother, believing his life cannot start until the missing part of it is found. The arrival of Bec Monahan at his door, offering to 'help the children' starts him on another journey entirely. Bec has been left a lot of money but to her it's tarnished and is a constant reminder of her troubled childhood. Together, she and Tom challenge their beliefs about each other as Vietnam weaves her magic over them both, but is magic enough?
As I said before, these books have never been released in the
USA and I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them. For photos, excerpts and the back ground story behind each of the novels, please pop by my
website
These books are set around Australia and around the world and it made me think, which do I prefer... the beach or the desert and why? I've visited Arizona and Nevada as well as the glorious beaches of Florida and the east coast of the USA and I'm torn! They both have their own unique beauty. What about you? Beach or desert?
Fiona Lowe is a RITA® and R*BY award-winning, multi-published author with Harlequin , Carina Press and in 2015, Berkley USA. 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. You can find her at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.
