Pre-launch Jitters - It's nearly time!

If you are a faithful reader of my blog, you will know that I have been working on my debut novel - Lifeboat - for some time now.

It is nearly ready for launch! Only a few more short days.

I am elated.

I am terrified.

I feel like an arrow, pulled back and ready to soar into something big.

I've borrowed that line from Cass, my heroine in Lifeboat. It feels appropriate.

I could fly into a wonderful new adventure. Or I could fail, dismally.

Either way, for better or for worse, Lifeboat is on its way.

Wish me luck?

Purple Roads by Fleur McDonald

Book Blurb:

When Anna and Matt finally buy their dream farm, their struggles aren’t quite over. First it’s patchy rain and poor crops, then Matt has an accident … and even when the heavens finally open all might yet be lost. An exciting new novel full of romance and mystery from the author of the bestselling Red Dust and Blue Skies.

Anna and Matt Butler were childhood sweethearts with a dream of owning their own land, a dream they achieved through hard work and determination.

But as the seasons conspire against them and Matt is involved in a terrible accident, the couple face financial ruin and the loss of their farm.

The Perk by Mark Gimenez

Book Blurb:

Beck Hardin, a high-profile Chicago trial lawyer, loses his wife to breast cancer and is left alone to raise their two young children. But he's been a full-time lawyer and a part-time father, so their lives soon fall apart. To save his children, he returns to his small hometown in the Texas Hill Country, reunites with his estranged father (a goat rancher turned winemaker), and soon becomes the local judge. He finds himself trying to pay off an old debt by solving the cold case murder of his high school buddy's teenage daughter—and discovers that a small-town judge's life isn't such a simple life.

Interview regarding my book, Lifeboat!

My gorgeous and talented friend, author Rhiannon Douglas has interviewed me on my thoughts regarding my novel, Lifeboat. You really should read it.

Click here to read the interview.

Pompomberry House by Rosen Trevithick

Book Blurb:

A writer's retreat seemed the perfect chance for Dee Whittaker to take her mind off her marital difficulties.

However, she meets five of the most hideous writers ever to have mastered a qwerty keyboard, and her problems quickly multiply. Things escalate further when the handyman winds up dead.

After fleeing from the island, Dee attempts to get her life back on track but begins to notice that something strange is going on. The stories written on the island are coming true and hers is next - complete with a murder.

Lola's Secret by Monica McInerney

Book Blurb:
Magic can happen in every family

At the Valley View Motel in South Australia's picturesque Clare Valley, eighty-four-year-old Lola Quinlan is up to her usual mischief. She's sent her family away for Christmas and invited a number of mystery guests to come and stay. But who are all these people, and why aren't they spending the festive season with their own loved ones?

As the big day draws closer and Lola's personal family dramas threaten to unravel her plans, she discovers that at a special time of year, magic can happen in every family – especially your own.

How Do You Like Your Heroine?

I love to read stories that have strong female leading characters. Women that can kick butt and stand up for themselves and those they love.Woman of courage and conviction.

I love when they are strong, not just physically, but emotionally as well. I'm not saying they have to be perfect, or that they can't have moments of vulnerability or weaknesses. This is, after all, what makes them human.

As much as I love these kinds of female leads they don't seem to be what my female leads are in the fiction that I write. Cass in Lifeboat is a survivor, but she's been shattered and has had to be emotionally glued back together. She is a fighter, but she's fragile too.

Book review of Wool Omnibus (Wool #1-5) by Hugh Howey

Book Blurb:
This Omnibus Edition collects the five Wool books into a single volume. It is for those who arrived late to the party and who wish to save a dollar or two while picking up the same stories in a single package.

The first Wool story was released as a standalone short in July of 2011. Due to reviewer demand, the rest of the story was released over the next six months. My thanks go out to those reviewers who clamored for more. Without you, none of this would exist. Your demand created this as much as I did.

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

When Can You Say You're an Author?

I've been tossing that word around on a few different websites with regard to myself for a month or two now. I put it on my Facebook page. I updated my header here to indicate I am one, because I have written this book.

But when can you say it and feel like it's true? Because even though I've written a book now, it doesn't feel real. The closest it has come to feeling real is when I revealed my book cover a few weeks ago. That day I was overwhelmed with the feeling that this was becoming true.