Family Traditions

My youngest son turned 13 recently. He's a teen! This is a good thing; really, it is ;-) and it's a milestone that needs acknowledging because he's entering a new phase of his life.

I'm big on celebrating significant events. Both my boys had 'naming' celebrations when they were born and every birthday is celebrated but this one, like 18 and 21, needs a bit more fanfare. I call them the 'rite of passage' birthdays. I'm also big on celebrating the little things and inventing little traditions that frame our lives. Like family games night and squish-on-the-couch movie night.

Our tradition for turning 13 is a meal at a silver-service restaurant- you know the type...no kids menu :-) We chose a restaurant in the country, nestled between a vineyard and an olive grove and where the art of the grounds and inside the restaurant is as amazing as the food. This suited Boy Wonder down to the ground as he's got a great eye art and he's especially loves buildings. He got a total kick out of the new wine-tasting building. Isn't it awesome? A building built on it's side, complete with stumps sticking out:-) 

Sculpture abounds and everywhere you turn you see something new that your gaze missed the first time; like the wire sculpture next to the water tank of the man fishing, complete with a fish on his hook and a glass of wine in his hand. Humor and whimsy is everywhere and after a three course lunch we enjoyed wandering around the gardens and walking off the food:-)

I guess because family traditions are important to me, it's why they often end up in my books. In Boomerang Bride, I gave tradition a bit of a wicked twist because in life, not all traditions are necessarily good!  Matilda grew up in a family where the tradition/belief was that the Geoffrey women travelled across the world for love. This ended up getting her in a bit of hot water and it's why the book opens with Matilda in small town Wisconsin, wearing a wedding dress, holding a cake, but missing a groom.

Do you have family traditions? Good ones, bad ones? I'm all ears.

Fiona Lowe writes stories set in small towns with big hearts. Whether they're set in small town USA or outback Australia, the one thing they have in common is a happy ever after that will make you sigh. For all the goss on her latest releases, and where to find her on the 'net, check out her website. Boomerang Bride and Career Girl in the Country are out now.

Fiona Lowe: Life imitating Art ? or Are you Serious?

On my honor and cross my heart, this story really did happen!

I was on a plane recently ...in fact a week before my book Boomerang Bride was released, and an American woman in her early 30s, with carry-on luggage (one tiny suitcase), sat down next to me. She'd flown into Sydney and was on her way to a town not too far from where I live. Now, we don't get many overseas visitors where I live because we're not a tropical climate and we're not a capital city, so the fact she was visiting intrigued me. Her reason? She was coming to marry her Australian fiance. (Blogger won't let me use accents!)

As a romance author I LOVE hearing about how people meet so I asked that very question. Turns out she'd met him on on-line. 'Really?' says I as I think about Matilda, my heroine from Boomerang Bride. 'Yes', she says. 'We met and I came out last year for a while and now we're getting married.'

I thought about the carry-on luggage. 'You've come with one suitcase?'
She had. Everything else had been packed in a container and was being shipped out. Her clothes, her furniture, her money; everything. Just like Matilda, she was crossing the world to marry the man she'd fallen in love with and starting a new life in a new country, a very long way from home.

I swallowed at this point because my Matilda arrives from Australia into the USA and finds her fiance has vanished. I wasn't going to mention that! I mean, there's nothing worse than raining on someone's parade, right, and my book was fiction. So I warmly congratulated her and mentioned I'd written a book about an Australian marrying an American after meeting him in a chat room.

We disembarked and walked across the tarmac into the wind and the rain. I was keen to get a look at this man she was leaving her country for, but just like when Matilda arrived in the USA, her fiance wasn't waiting at the airport. However, this women didn't seem to be expecting him as she walked confidently toward the local taxi and disappeared.

Her story was so spookily similar to the start of Boomerang Bride that it blew me away. I only hope she ends up as happy in her life as my fictitious Matilda, that her finace is not a "Barry-the-Bastard" and was in fact meeting her in the next town with the marching band, flowers and a hug that says, 'I am so glad you're here with me.'

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 previous finalist in the Romantic Book of the Year award, she's writing her 19th novel. She loves to hear from readers and you can find her at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

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