Fiona Lowe's Blog, page 15

Merry Christmas! Season’s Greetings!

It’s Christmas Eve down here in Australia and it’s a warm one! Down the road in Melbourne, they experienced the hottest night in December EVER! The bureau is predicating a cool change and Christmas day will be a cool 21C/72 F.  I won’t need a Christmas day swim this year.

Most years I host Christmas but this year we are travelling to my sister’s house, a 90 minute drive away. As we are not hosting we don’t have guests in the house on Christmas eve which seems very odd! So instead of dashing about, I have planned a special meal for the four of us and a viewing of Love Actually

I want to wish all, my very valued readers and friends, a very safe and happy festive season. I have appreciated so much your emails, tweets and Facebook comments over the year and I am thrilled that you enjoy my books. It’s my pleasure to write them for you.

Merry Christmas! Joyeaux Noel! Feliz Navidad!

Today, In the USA!

I’m thrilled and excited to say that today in the USA,my RITA winning novel,  Boomerang Bride has hit the shelf as a trade paperback! The book which started life as an eBook  is now in physical format.   Here is is in a book store somewhere in Montana! Doesn’t it look perty?

Many thanks to my Twitter mate, Kari Lynn Dell (@kidell) for taking the time to photograph if for me. I love the support of the world-wide, romance writing community!

Boomerang Bride is the second Carina Press novel to be printed for mass-market distribution and I’m honoured to be part of this new program with this book that had such a long and difficult road to publication.

I’m also super-excited about my Bride Trilogy “Wedding Fever” which is out with Carina Press in 2013. Saved By The Bride is in production and out in April. Picture Perfect Wedding is being edited straight after Christmas and will be out in August, and come February, i’m writing Runaway Groom.  Want to be kept in the loop about these books? Sign up for my newsletter on my website at the bottom of the home page

.

Sydney in December

I spent the weekend in Sydney; the Emerald city. Often going up there from cooler Victoria, I melt in the humidity but this year it was the reverse. Sydney was cooler!  I was there for my husband’s work Christmas party which was held in a gorgeous private dining room at Curzon Hall. I am sure our dinning room with private balcony started life as a bedroom. Over a  hindered years ago, this magnificent mansion was built with money earned from apple orchards. In fact it was the place the granny smith apple was created.

The rest of the weekend was spent visiting. I got to catch up with Joanne, the woman who provided all the information about artificial insemination for Newborn Baby for Christmas. I got to meet her lovely, baby boy as well. What’s not to love about a bouncy 8 month-old, smiling and gurgling baby!

 

 

 

We also had Yum Cha in Chinatown and then took the boys to N2 Extreme Gelato. Set up like a lab with the ingredients in beakers and the attendants in white coats, you see your gelato made before your eyes using dry ice. A fun gimmick and the mango gelato tasted identical to a real mango! They have fun Christmas taste sensations such as  gingerbread and plum pudding.

This is my 7th trip to Sydney in the last two years and every time I go up there I say, ‘I’m going to Manly,’  Once again, I didn’t make it but there’s always next time.

 

Nine Days On a Bike

At the finish line in the wet on Sunday with DH and Boy Wonder after riding 591km

I’m back! I’ve cycled 591km, riding in either blinding rain or razing heat,  I have thighs the size of a mountain and a bottom that requests I don’t sit on a bike for another week or so!

I’ve talked fourteen year-olds  up and over massive hills, coped with kids who refused to get back on their bikes, spent five hours in A&E with hypothermic kids, watched with pride the quiet achievers who just get on with things without complaint while the drama queens catastrophize and I’ve had moments when I’ve screamed like a banshee when boys drifted to the wrong side of the road with on coming traffic.

Camp life. 3500 people at the showgrounds at Yarragon

I’ve also had some lovely conversations with these young teenagers who next year will be dealing with physical challenges and I hope they can draw on some of the stuff they have learned over the last nine days that no matter how hard the going gets, they can do it.

 

What did I learn? That I can ride up steep and never ending hills even though I hate them, that I take 20km every morning to warm up and before that my legs are like porridge but after that  I find a rhythmn and the cycling is fun. That I can function without ten cups of tea in a day but I would prefer not to. That I think the Great Vic Bike Ride should be 7 days not nine

I learned that my 14 year-old son is a delight. That he loves climbing hills on his bike…he didn’t inherit that from me! That even on the day he felt unwell, he dug deep without

complaint and rode 108km and that he has tolerance and patience with his team members that is way beyond his years. I am so immensely proud of him.

We had driving rain and cold on the fourth day and nine  students, all who are tiny, got mild hypothermia. They recovered quickly and less than 48 hours later  we had burning heat with the temperature rocking up to 38C/over 100F. On day 8, when we had to ride 108km, we had lovely temperate day but we got super strong winds to test us.

All in all it was a physical and emotional endurance test with lots of laughs, a few tears but a great sense of satisfaction in not only accomplishing the ride but helping a group of students accomplish it as well.

On this Monday morning I am grateful for my comfy bed, my hot bath, not having to have breakfast at 5.30am and not having to line up for the bathroom! I am also grateful to have had nine days cut off from the real world. That in itself is very energising.

However, I have just realized it is now December and I have done nothing to prepare for Christmas. I have edits on two books and a short story to write so I think I am well and truly back in my real world again. I just need to wait for my brain to catch up!

 

 

This Week I Am Doing This

Saturday morning at 4:00am the alarm will go off and the great adventure starts.

See you in December!

Book News

I have been working really hard to get the current book I am writing, a medical romance which will be part of the Gold Coast Hospital series (2013), finished before I take off on Saturday on the Great Victorian Bike Ride  It was always going to be a ‘tight write’ due to time constraints and most of me thought I wouldn’t make it so I am THRILLED to say, not only is it finished but it is edited, proofed and ready to go to my editor. YAY

Of course, finishing one task just frees me up for many more!

[image error]

This week I am doing the HUGE pack for the bike ride and preparing for my husband’s birthday on Friday. My life is a series of lists upon lists. I have way to much in my brain and I can’t remember anything at all.

 

For those of you not on Facebook or Twitter, I have some exciting news! Boomerang Bride is out as an audio book for readers in the USA & Canada. I am ridiculously thrilled about this! I’m enjoying listening to it very much, which surprised me as often when authors hear their work read out, they cringe.  One of the exciting things about this recording is that they used an Australian actress, Tess Masters, who lives in LA. She can do a fantastic American accent and everyone in the book sounds American  as they should but when Matilda opens her mouth, she’s deliciously Aussie!

I’ll be off the air until December…not really that far away is it? Yikes! I haven’t even thought about the Christmas letter or the cards or…

Oh, well! Anyway, please wish me fair winds and cool temperatures…already it is facing up to be hot and I’ll fill you in on my adventures when I get back!

Fiona x

 

 

My Spring Garden

As my bio says, I am the guardian of 80 rose bushes and every spring my garden is gorgeous but this year due to a combination of rain and a cool spring, the roses are even more spectacular.

For years I have wondered about my David Austin Peony roses…the fragrance is divine but the flower disappointing. Not this year!

The Lad, at 18 has been wowing his girlfriend with long-stemmed and fragrant Mr. Lincoln  The deep velvety maroon colour is synonymous with romance and he’s benefiting from the roses and saving a lot of money

I have a combination of tea bush roses and standards. The Iceberg Blush standard roses cross the front garden.

This huge bush rose reminds me of a bride.

Of course, roses are not native to Australia, so here to finish off the spring colours are the flowering bottle brushes that are so vibrant in my neighbourhood at the moment.

Enjoy!

Newborn Baby for Christmas on sale NOW!

It’s release day in the USA and UK for Newborn Baby for Christmas. The Aussies have to wait another month, sorry!

Do I hear some of you say that November 1st is a bit early for a Christmas story?  Scarily, it is not! I ordered my first Christmas present yesterday for my younger son and this weekend it is time to cut up the fruit for the liqour-infused Christmas cake. It needs to soak for a month before I bake it in early December. November 1 also means it’s time to plant the tomato and basil seedlings down here as technically the frosts are over, although given the world’s weather, who really knows, right?

The shops are now filling with Christmas things and the junk mail has gone up exponentially; another sign that the retailers certainly think it is time for us to be thinking of Christmas. I have even had the urge to start making a list!

Things get busy and as you know, between now and Christmas I have a son writing his final Year 12 exams and an insane bike ride to complete so I am starting to feel the pressure to ‘get organised.’ I am not sure it will translate into being organised but it’s a start. I am starting to ask the boys what they might want. As both of them will be living away from home next year, it may well be a ‘practical’ Christmas…sheets, towels, rubber boots, that sort of thing!

Anyway, back to my book, Newborn Baby for Christmas. I love Christmas and I loved writing this book. The idea came from the original Christmas story, starting with the virgin birth. Almost all the elements of the original Christmas story are in my very modern, 2012, Christmas tale, although no camels.  To get a feel for the setting, please visit my website. I set this book very close to where I live, which is a beautiful coastal part of the world. I even mention Leura Park Estate, a favourite winery who’s motto, ‘Life is Short, Celebrate Well’ is something we should all take on board.

I hope you enjoy reading Newborn Baby For Christmas  as much as I enjoyed writing it. Enjoy the run up to Christmas!

Fiona x

Hot and Sunny

While the US is being hammered by Hurricane Sandy, down here, we’re having our first real taste of summer.

It’s officially spring until December 1st, but the next three days are a promise of things to come.

We have clear blue skies and 30C/86F. There is even a bushfire an hour away so yeah, summer is coming.

I confess to preferring cool to hot and this morning at tennis we were a bit surprised at the bite of the sun. So we’re back to sunscreen, lugging grey-water for the garden, pulling down the outside canvas blinds to keep things cool.  The upside? The roses are flowering and they are divine.

Last Day of School For The Lad!*

The Lad, who is doing Year 12 this year has left home for his ‘Celebration Day’ aka as the re branded ’muck-up’ day, aka, the last day of secondary school.  Ironically, as he is doing the International Baccalaureate  not the VCE,(Victorian Certificate Education)  it isn’t even his last day! He still has to roll up until October 31st as his exams start a few days after the VCE.

But today is the day so here he is as Zoro. There will be a bouncy castle and a chocolate fountain as well as a BBQ.

Saturday night we have Valedictory dinner and then Sunday is the formal proceedings of Speech Day.

So it is really happening. He is so very close to finishing his secondary education. My first born is about to sit the most significant exams of his short life so far and as I’ve told him, these are just the first of many.

I still remember the little boy who refused to put on his school uniform on his first day of school 13 years ago. Fortunately that was the only day he didn’t want to go!

Also, today I’m over at Love Is The Best Medicine, the medical romance author’s blog and I’m talking writing and biking. 

Love to see you there!