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 What was your first reaction when you heard
The Dream Hunter had been shortlisted in the mainstream section of the RBOTY?
That was really quite a moment. I was ecstatic and I think I'm still grinning because
The Dream Hunter has been doing his best for me for years. The first excitement came while the work was still in progress and I entered the synopsis and opening chapter (under a working title) in the RWAmerica 'Write to Win' competition. It was a finalist that year, and when I entered the completed manuscript of
The Dream Hunter in the Emma Darcy Award, it was a finalist in 1999.
On the strength of that, it was picked up immediately by Wild Rose Publications and published in 2000, then came the RBOTY entry, and the shortlisting! I can't help feeling this book has given me a lot to cheer about.
What was it that inspired you to write The Dream Hunter? A character, the plot, the locality?
A long time ago I visited a derelict old house on the Darling Downs, a hauntingly beautiful place that stayed in my storehouse of ideas until I found the right people with the right reasons to restore it. Steele Hannigan came along, wanting to leave behind his poverty-ridden childhood and advertise the fact that he now had enough money to bring an historic property back to life.
To help him create his dream, he needed the expertise of Brooke Grenville, his University-days lover. The story took off, because Steele and Brooke were both carrying a load of unfinished business.
The character of Brooke - the cool, classy blonde who is an expert in antiques - is my own creation, but I have met Steele Hannigan face to face. He does exist, but not in Australia, and I'll never know whether his dreams really did become reality.
Is this your first full length novel?
No indeed. I served a very hard, necessary apprenticeship, and sitting in the bottom drawer are the remnants of at least three completed novels written before I realised I was constitutionally incapable of producing a category romance. The plot for
The Dream Hunter wouldn't go away, and eventually turned into a mainstream novel.
How long had you been writing when The Dream Hunter was published?
I've been reading incessantly since I was five years old, and I think I've been writing almost as long. I began my first novel when I was fourteen, and had my first publications in school magazines. I've always been a dreamer, with a head full of characters clamouring for their stories to be told, and some of these later turned into short stories that I entered in competitions or submitted to women's magazines. Sometimes I made a sale, sometimes I got a rejection. I guess it was all part of the learning curve, and one thing I learned through it all was to keep writing and keep submitting. Who was it said: 'The harder I work, the luckier I get'?
What's an ideal writing day like for you?
I'm a morning person, and my characters wake up early, too. I'm passionate about writing, and if I don't turn the computer on every day I go into
withdrawal. I don't set myself any sort of daily target, so sometimes I produce a lot, other days I do a lot of writing in my head. When I'm plotting a book I like to draw up a chart with names and relationships, goals and conflicts and the direction of the action. However, nothing is carved in stone, and by the time my characters have become three-dimensional (and have taken over my life) they jump up and
surprise me by doing the unexpected, bless them.
You've more recently turned to writing historicals - why did you make that change?
I've got to think about this. Basically I write about relationships, and the eternal elements of a love story, in this century or in time past. I also like a story to show the strength of an intelligent woman struggling to overcome difficulties. (Preserve me from the dreaded word 'feisty') And for a hero I must have a deep man with deep passions, no matter what century he lives in. Of course he is always heroic as well, and I have to admit that something happened to me when I first saw Michael Caine looking gorgeous and fighting against overwhelming odds in the movie 'Zulu' - red uniform, white horse ... The two19th century books I've written have cavalry-officer heroes, and through my research I've become a (minor) authority on the English cavalry.
How much research do you have to put into writing historicals?
If I say 'a lot' that sounds very dry, whereas I love the detective work involved in discovering who really did what behind the scenes of some dramatic stage in history. I was always the sort of kid who wanted to know 'why' about everything and my own reading has always been eclectic - fiction, history, travel, intrigue, biography, journals.
My first historical, Saskia, set in Napoleonic times has just been bought by Robert Hale in London. Saskia's story grew out of the reading I'd done about the English abolition of the slave trade (while other countries still traded), so I wrote about the dangers Saskia overcame on her bankrupt sugar plantation in the West Indies when she helped her own slaves escape from a Dutch slave-trader.
Hero, John Ashwood, all this time is on the other side of the Atlantic fighting with Wellington's cavalry in the Peninsular Campaign. I read a number of fascinating first-hand accounts written about officers' wives visiting their husbands during a long lull in the hostilities, so I have John Ashwood's new wife coming to winter with him in Lisbon, and meeting Saskia's half-brother, a cavalry officer. But he is also an agent for the French, and what a villain he turns out to be! But it's through his 'dastardly doings' that the lives of Saskia and John are drawn together.
My second historical, Palace of the Winds, also breaks all the tried-and-true conventions of historical romance writing. Set in Northern India in the 1830's, it draws on some of extraordinary events described by various English ladies in their memoirs and journals of the period - palace plots, assassinations, native rebellions, the opium trade with China. Hardly 'dry research'.
What are you currently working on?
I can only work on one project at a time. Another cast of historical characters is waiting impatiently along the Silk Road in China while I complete a major rewrite on a contemporary mainstream that has been in limbo for years. Good story. Good writing. But something just wasn't working, until I realised I had killed off the wrong woman. Now I've allowed her to stay alive and the whole plot has had an injection of excitement.
Do you work with a critique group?
Yes, there are five of us who have been supporting, brainstorming,
critiquing, commiserating and celebrating together for several years. Even though we might be writing in different genres, we all agree that the principles of good writing don't change. I find their input invaluable. And I often wonder what the neighbours think is going on in here when our brainstorming sessions get into top gear!
Apart from writing, what are your interests?
When I left a very busy, stressful career, I really imagined I would devote myself exclusively to writing. The reality is that I have learned to do the quick-step through the delights of being involved in the lives of eight grand-children. I go to football matches and swimming races, kindergarten concerts, and I'm there to see them collect school awards and sing in eisteddfods. My friends are learning that I'm rarely available to sit around at luncheon parties, although a good concert or play will bring me running. My greatest gadget is a telephone answering machine to screen all incoming calls while I'm working, and another is a timer that I try to remember to set to get me up from the computer occasionally to do a little exercise.
My two cats and I have moved into a small house with a back garden gate that opens onto a reserve with tall trees and walking paths leading for miles along a creek. It provides good thinking space and my weekly vow is to use it more often.
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The
Dream Hunter