Lizzy Chandler's Blog, page 2

And the winner is…

Thanks everyone who participated in my recent giveaway for By Her Side.* The winner, chosen via random.org, is Bronwyn.

Congratulations, Bronwyn! Look out for my email so we can arrange for you to redeem your prize.

For everyone else, you’ll have another chance in the next couple of days to win a copy of either of my ebooks – Snowy River Man or By Her Side.

To celebrate Australia Day – and being a finalist in the Australian Romance Readers Awards “Favourite New Romance Author for 2015” – I’m participating in Book’d Out’s Australian Day Blog Hop and this time there’ll be THREE lucky winners. Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s post for your chance to win. Then join the blog hop fun to see what other books and prizes you might win – and help celebrate Australia Day.

Happy reading!

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*You can read what reviewers on Goodreads are saying about By Her Side here.

Australian Romance Reader Award Finalist 2015

I’m thrilled to announce I’m a finalist in the Australian Romance Readers Award for “Favourite New Romance Author for 2015”.

To say this news has come as a shock would be an understatement. I’m so glad people are reading and enjoying my books. It has inspired me to try even harder to get my work out there.

A new year, a new computer, a new writing project…

You can see the full list of award nominees here, including my writing buddies D B Tait, Kandy Shepherd and Cathleen Ross. Voting is open to all ARRA members and closes on 28 February. Winners will be announced on 19 March at the awards dinner.

Are you going? I’d love to see you there.

Remember, if you don’t yet have a copy of my latest novel, By Her Side, I’m hosting a giveaway here – closes soon.

Happy reading!

 

Book giveaway

To celebrate the release of my new romantic suspense, By Her Side, I’m holding a giveaway. To be in the draw, enter you details here.

Here’s what one reader thought about By Her Side:

If you’re a fan of any kind of romance, then this book is a must read!!! Rory and Vince kick ass! Highly recommend!! (Megan on Goodreads – 5 stars)

And Deborah from debbish.com had this to say:

This is an enjoyable and easy read, offering up a solid plot and delightful characters. (full review here)

If you already have a copy, why not tell your friends?

Release day: By Her Side

My new book, By Her Side, is out today.

A romantic suspense, it features Vince, an undercover cop who is persuaded into acting as the temporary bodyguard for Rory, the independent-minded granddaughter of a wealthy Sydney business man.

You can buy a copy at AmazonAU, Amazon, AmazonUK, Booktopia, iBooks and Kobo. (Please note, it’s only available as an ebook.)

It already has a 5-star review on Goodreads!

 

Correction: By Her Side out Dec 8

Just goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you see on Facebook.

When a writer friend congratulated me on today’s release of By Her Side earlier today, I didn’t question it. I just assumed the publishers had put it forward a week. Turns out she had the date wrong, not me.

Apologies if you rushed out to buy a copy only to find you had to preorder one instead.

If you didn’t see this morning’s post, you can read all about the new novel – and preorder it, if you’d like – here.

My new romantic suspense novel – out today!

I knew it was due out soon, but today’s release date for my new romantic suspense novel has taken me by suprise – I thought it was out next week.

Here it is: By Her Side. 

She would trust him with her life. But can either of them trust their hearts?

Rory Sutton Whitfield isn’t a princess, even though her wealthy family insists on treating her like one. Fresh from her travels and finally achieving the independence she craves, the last thing she wants is to become swept up in family problems. But her half-brother has disappeared and her grandfather insists on hiring a bodyguard for her. Rory won’t be controlled by anyone, especially not a taciturn detective like Vince Maroney, a man of few words who nonetheless arouses disturbing emotions.

Vince Maroney has learned his lesson about playing the hero; he stepped up once and it cost him everything. But when he saves the granddaughter of one of Sydney’s wealthiest men, he finds himself embroiled in events beyond his control. Rory is beautiful, smart, independent. But her family is all secrets and lies, money papered over injustices. Rory makes him feel things he thought long dead, but the pains of the past create distance, and she comes from a completely different world. How can one of Sydney’s pampered princesses ever find common ground with her reluctant bodyguard?

I’d love to know what you think of the cover.

 

Love Reading Romance giveaway

Do you love reading romance?

Love Reading Romance blog is celebrating its two-year anniversary with a great ebook bundle giveaway. There are lots of great romance ebooks on offer, including a copy of Snowy River Man. 

For your chance to win, head on over to their blog and leave a comment mentioning the latest romance you read and loved – or enter the rafflecopter. The giveaway is open internationally and is open for 30 days from today.

Good luck!

By the way, if you’d like to know what I’ve been reading lately, you might like to check out my book review blog here.

Jack Fairley: romance hero

When I first saw the cover of Snowy River Man, I was thrilled. That’s my hero: Jack Fairley! Just as I’d imagined him.

The character of Jack was inspired, in part, by my uncles, Jack and Rody. They were wheat-sheep farmers from the Riverina district. Both rode horses. Both were kind, solid men with a strength borne of long years battling drought, floods and fluctuating prices. Both had big families, too, like ours, and a special way with children.

Although I grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches, like a lot of city kids I’d visit my country cousins during school holidays. I loved staying on the farm, especially at Jack and Rita’s. That’s where I discovered the family “library” and snuck away to read ancient books like Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong series. But there was plenty of outdoor activity, too. Rita taught us to ride and we’d help round up mobs of sheep. As we got older, Jack let us drive his ute while he stood on the trailer at the back to distribute feed, or stopped to treat a fly-blown sheep. Back at the farm, we watched, fascinated, as he strung up a wether, cut its throat and slit its belly, letting the farm dogs snap up the bloody entrails. He enjoyed our horrified reaction. “You like eating lamb’s fry, don’t you?” he asked. “Where do you think it comes from? City slickers!”

I can’t remember ever hearing a cross word from Jack. Even that time when I accelerated the ute instead of braking and he fell off the back of the trailer.

Years later I learned that he’d distinguished himself as a soldier before he settled down and had a family. He rarely spoke of it, only opening up when one of my nephews went off to Afghanistan. Jack was a modest man. I like to think my hero Jack Fairley shares some of his good qualities.

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This is the fifth in a series of guest posts I wrote when Snowy River Man was first published. It first appeared on The Neverending Bookshelf.

Why romance?

Romances, like coming-of-age stories, deal with one of the most dramatic and risky times of the human lifespan: choosing a mate. Choose wisely, and happiness may result; choose badly, and we get misery. Many of us have experienced the misery, but we still like to be reminded of the courtship phase, that thrill of meeting someone and thinking, “Could this be the one?”

Could this be the partner who will help protect and provide for us when we’re at our most vulnerable; who’ll share the housework – not as a “help” but because it’s their job as a human being; who’ll stay fit and good in bed; who’ll share our sense of humour; who’ll put us first – but can care for others, too?

With 3.5 billion females on the planet, logic tells us that we can’t all find that perfect partner or, at least, not in the same person continuously. Most of us have “settled” for someone all-too-human, someone with irritating habits, a little selfish at times: people like us. We’ve had to develop our own qualities to keep seeing the good in the person we wake up with, qualities such as patience, tolerance, forgiveness and a willingness to let go of mistakes, both ours and theirs; as well as a sense of humour. We’ve had to become the kind of person we want our partner to be.

In reading romance, we relive the time when everything was at risk. We hope that something good will come of it, and fear that maybe the person we’re falling for is not the one we want them to be. We remember that extraordinary high called “limerance”, and the agony of not being sure it’ll work out. Except, in romance novels, we know it will work, because it’s fantasy.

My debut romance, Snowy River Man, is about more than limerance; it’s about love, and the qualities a couple need to create a happy life together. It’s a story of what happens when two people who have seen the worst in each other are given a second chance.

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This is the fourth in a series of guest blog posts I wrote for the release of Snowy River Man. A version first appeared on Love Reading Romance blog and is reprinted here with permission.

An Aboriginal psychic heroine?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the psychic element in Snowy River Man. In this post, I discuss the inspiration for the heroine.

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It’s not stated overtly in the novel, but there are hints that the heroine, Katrina, is part-Aboriginal – as well as psychic. So how did this come about?

I’ve written elsewhere that the inspiration for Katrina being psychic comes from my own family, but I haven’t discussed her part Aboriginality – or the weird coincidences that happened after I’d first drafted the story.

I wrote Snowy River Man after staying with my partner in a fishing shack on the shores of Lake Eucumbene. I was fairly confident about the setting – all except for the hero Jack’s house, a nineteenth-century two storey mansion. Was such a place realistic for that area? We decided to scout round Snowy River Shire looking looking for something like it.

We drove and drove, covering hundreds of kilometres without result. Nothing as grand as Jack’s house appeared. Most of the places we saw were single-storey weatherboard homesteads and falling down huts, or modern buildings. After we’d driven in a big loop, we came back towards Adaminaby, and out near the tiny airport saw a two-storey mansion, just as I’d imagined. It was surrounded by tall trees and not far from the river, like in my story. At my partner’s prompting, we drove up the long driveway and knocked on the door. A caretaker and his wife answered and, once they knew I was writing a book, invited us in. To my surprise I discovered Patrick White had stayed there in his youth, and the house was now owned by a Greek tycoon. I was thrilled to learn that, like my story, it had a ballroom.

On a hunch, I asked, “There isn’t another, newer house across the valley, is there?” I was thinking of the home my hero Jack had built for his mother-in-law.

“Oh, you must mean the Farleys,” the caretaker said. “They’re our neighbours.”

I nearly choked. In the early draft of the novel, I called my hero “Jack Farley”. (After this, I changed it to “Fairley”.)

Still stunned by the coincidence, we extended our drive and drove up to the Yarrangobilly Caves. There we came across a plaque commemorating a nineteenth-century indigenous man who could well have been the ancestor for my character Murray Tom. The man’s name? “Murray Jack.”

It seemed, somehow, I had some deep connection to the land and this story.

When I came back from our holiday, I spoke to a friend who was often mistaken for Koori, even though he grew up in a “white” family. He told me he used to have dreams in which a tribal elder appeared and spoke to him. An idea started to form. I’d given Katrina the surname “Delaney” to suggest a Celtic heritage (like mine), one which might help to explain her psychic gift. I looked up the name and found it’s also a surname among indigenous Australians. I wondered whether it might be okay to imply Katrina had indigenous heritage. I talked it over with an Aboriginal friend here in the Blue Mountains – the one who encouraged me to establish the Australian Women Writers challenge. I mentioned my desire to create a subtext for the story, a way of questioning the settlers’ legitimacy in occupying and possessing the land. (An ambitious aim for a category romance!) She thought it was a great idea. She also told me I’d get the story published, and she was right. She’s also a bit psychic.

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This is the fifth in a series of guest blog posts I wrote when Snowy River Man was published. A version of this post first appeared on Write Note Reviews and is reblogged here with permission.