Writers On Reading: Jenn Mcleod, Author of a House For All Seasons

Today I have the lovely Jenn Mcleod visiting Flying Pony, sharing with us her reading habits and loves. Jenn is the author of A House For All Seasons and the soon to be released follow up The Simmering Season. Jenn’s stories are set in gorgeous country towns and are about women facing real life problems and dilemmas.

 

 

Simmering Season …  when a school reunion brings home more than memories.

Back in Calingarry Crossing to sell the family pub, Maggie Lindeman has no idea a perfect storm is heading her way until her past and present collide with the unexpected.

 Maggie once had a crush on Dan Ireland, now a work-weary police crash investigator, still hell-bent on punishing himself for his misspent youth. Dan has ample reason for not going home to Calingarry Crossing for the school reunion, but one very good reason why he should.

Maggie is dealing with a restless seventeen-year-old son, a father with dementia, a fame-obsessed musician husband, a dwindling bank account and a country pub that just won’t sell.

 The last thing she needs is a surprise houseguest for the summer. Fiona Bailey-Blair, daughter of an old friend and spoilt with everything but the truth, whips up a maelstroml of gossip when she blows into town.

 This storm season, when a school reunion brings home more than memories, Maggie Lindeman will discover  …  there’s no keeping a lid on some secrets.

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And on to the interview …

1. Which books do you most vividly remember from your childhood?

All I remember really is, as the last of three children, I had LOTS of second-hand books. With siblings five and seven years older, those books came out of storage with missing covers, torn pages – sometimes even the last pages were missing. Perhaps making up my own endings was my earliest attempts at storytelling. Things haven’t changed much. I will still make up my own ending to stories when I don’t like the one provided (especially sad movies, like Message in a Bottle when Kevin Costner … . Okay, no spoilers here!) The Horse Whisper was the one time I liked Hollywood rewriting the ending.

2. Who are your three most favourite fiction characters? Tell us what you love about each of them.

I love a good popular fiction character. Picking favourites is not something I do well, but there were a couple of recent standouts.

Most recently I’ve enjoyed Liane Moriaty’s Cecilia (The Husband’s Secret). I nicknamed her Tupperware Woman and I thought Liane awfully clever to use the Tupperware analogy for a character. Dianne Blacklock’s The Best Man characters – yes, all of them – were fabulous. I don’t think I’ve read a book that made me love and care about every character the way I cared for these one – yes, even the not-so-nice one! Then, because the females portrayed are just the way I like them – real and relatable and fabulously flawed – P.A. O’Reilly’s Loretta Boskovic in The Fine Colour of Rust and Eve from Blackwattle Lake were memorable for all the right reasons. (Pamela, I like that our stories show everyday women – warts and all – who don’t always win and work things out.)

Thanks Jenn 🙂

3. If you could invite any five writers to a cosy dinner party who would you ask and why?

I would never have ‘just a dinner party’ that limited me to five guests. Like picking favourites is something I am not good at, I am also a bad decision maker. The occasion would have to be a BYO plate and drink affair so I could squeeze as many fabulous writers as possible into the same room. Good food, good wine, good company. Bliss!

4. What book has made you laugh out loud?

The Rosie Project – only because I know an Aspie in real life and the author really nailed the Don Tillman character. I also laughed out loud at Loretta’s maternal instincts in The Fine Colour of Rust.

5. What book, or scene from a book, has made you cry?

I saw an author posting on Facebook the other day, asking if it is weird to cry over your own books?  “Completely normal” according to the responses! So, I am loud and proud of the fact that I cry over my own stories, especially towards the final editing phases. (Perhaps that has something to do with me reading the same lines over and over and over. A case of “Oh, no, please, I can’t read this again.”) Hopefully the reason I cry is more to do with my stories. They tackle contemporary human issues that can be emotionally charged and I will often put myself in my character’s shoes. Speaking of shoes … Maggie (in Simmering Season) has a glass slipper/Cinderella moment at the school reunion which gets to me every time. *sniff*

6. Is there a genre of book you’d never read? Why?

Lots! I have ventured into new genres occasionally. Most recently I confess to losing my erotic fiction virginity by reading (and loving) Kate Belle’s The Yearning. Brilliant writer!

I’ve always read the genre I like to write in – mostly – until I was asked: “How do you know what you like to write if you don’t read other genres?” Good point, I thought! (Note to self: Must try harder.) If only I could find a few more hours in every day so I can fit in more reading time.

7. What are the top three books in your TBR pile?

Fairway to Heaven by Lily Malone (maybe a little out of my genre – see above – but the cover is just too good to ignore and Lily is lovely, with the kind of wicked sense of humour I enjoy!)

Safe Harbour -Helene Young’s new release (also out April 1)

An untitled work-in-progress by Shannon Garner – a young local writer I’ve been mentoring. I get immense pleasure from seeing her grow as a writer and I like to give back by help an aspiring author in ways I would have loved someone to help me. (Shannon, I want that next draft in my hands ASAP!)

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It’s been great chatting to Jenn this week. You can connect with her here: 

Connect

Website:        www.jennjmcleod.com

Facebook:      /JennJMcLeod.Books

Twitter:          @jennjmcleod

Goodreads giveaway running until 22 March, 2014

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Having a Yarn at the Bar With Jenn Mcleod, Author Of a House For All Seasons

This week I’m over at Jenn McLeod’s blog having a yarn at the bar.

Jenn is the author of A House For All Seasons and the soon to be released follow up The Simmering Season. I just love her gorgeous book covers!

Come and join us!

http://www.jennjmcleod.com/bar-yarns-w-author-pamela-cook/

 

        

 

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The Writing Process Blog Hop: Writers Reveal Their Process

It’s great to be taking part in this blog hop on The Writing Process.

Thanks to the lovely Alissa Callen for tagging me. If you missed Alissa’s post last week you can find it here and here’s more about Alissa:

When Alissa Callen isn’t writing she plays traffic controller to four children, three dogs, two horses and one renegade cow who really does believe the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Her books are characteristically heart-warming, emotional and character driven. Beneath Outback Skies, published by Random House Australia, is available now as an eBook and from May 2014 in print. Down Outback Roads, also published by Random House Australia, will be out in May as an eBook. Alissa loves to connect with readers and can be found online at her website or Facebook.

 

And now for my own responses to The Writing Process questions:

1)   What am I working on?

Since finishing my second novel, Essie’s Way (published in December 2013 by Hachette) I’ve been taking a break but it’s time to get back to the desk and start work again. I have a few vague ideas for a new novel but at this stage I’m just playing around and seeing how they develop. I’m also preparing to teach my first workshop at The NSW Writer’s Centre on February 8 (click here for more information). It’s a one day course designed as a kick start for those who want to write but don’t know where to begin.

2)   How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Both the novels I’ve had published (the first was Blackwattle Lake, also by Hachette) fall into the Rural Fiction genre. They’re set in the south east of NSW and like other novels in this broad genre the setting is an integral part of the story. I guess where my novel differ from many of the others in this genre is that they’re not Rural Romance. I concentrate more on the lives of the female protagonists, what they want to achieve in life, their past and their relationships. There are romantic elements in both novels, particularly in Essie’s Way, but romance isn’t the central focus. Essie also has a historical thread, which may be different from others in this genre.

 

3)   Why do I write what I do?

My original style of writing was more in the literary fiction line. I fell into writing Rural Fiction almost by accident, having completed it as Nano novel in November 2009 and then submitting it to the Queensland Writers Centre/Hachette Manuscript Development Program in 2011 via which it was accepted for publication. Yay! When I wrote the original draft I hadn’t heard of Rural Fiction but I decided to “write what I know” and since I have horses and spend a lot of time on the south coast of NSW, Blackwattle Lake was the result. I also wanted to write about a feisty, independent woman dealing with her past, as Eve Nicholls does in this story. I really enjoyed writing in this genre and found I was able to immerse myself in the sights and sounds of the country areas I’ve grown to love. So when it came time to write a new novel I went with the same genre, adding a historical thread and a double narrative, which I really enjoyed. I like the idea of doing something a little different with each novel so it will be interesting to see what emerges with the next one.

 

4)   How does my writing process work?

Good question! It seems to have changed with each book I’ve written. The first novel I wrote (currently unpublished) took five years and I seemed to be constantly revising parts of it. As I mentioned, Blackwattle Lake was a nano, so the first draft was written in a month and it was revised a few times over the next eighteen months or so. Essie’s Way began as a few fragments I’d written years ago and when my publisher asked me for a synopsis for a new book I hurriedly threw a few ideas together and then wrote the first draft in about four months, revising it in the following three months. It was pretty intense but I have to say that writing fast seems to work for me (you can read my guest post for Writing Novels in Australia on this method here). I’m an all or nothing kind of person and it seems to be the same for my writing – it’s either full on or zero!

 

If you’d like to connect with me:

Website: http://www.pamelacook.com.au

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PamelaCookAuthor

Twitter: @PamelaCookAU

Next week three wonderful writers share their thoughts on the writing process:

Jennifer Scoullar

Jennifer is a lapsed lawyer who has always harboured a deep appreciation and respect for the natural world. Her house is on a hill-top, overlooking valleys of messmate and mountain ash. A pair of old eagles live there too. Black-shouldered wallabies graze by the creek. Eastern Spinebills hover among the callistemon. Jennifer lives with her family on a beautiful property in the mountains, that was left to her by her father. Horses have always been her passion. She grew up on the books of Elyne Mitchell, and all her life she’s ridden and bred horses, in particular Australian Stock Horses. She has three published novels. Wasp Season (Sid Harta 2008) Brumby’s Run (Penguin 2012) and Currawong Creek (Penguin 2013) Billabong Bend will be published by Penguin in May 2014.

Website    –      http://jenniferscoullar.com/

Facebook  –     https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJenScoullar

Twitter      –     https://twitter.com/JenScoullar

Monique McDonell

Monique is an Australian author who writes contemporary women’s fiction including chick lit and romance. She lives on Sydney’s Nothern Beaches with her husband and daughter, and despite her dog phobia, with a dog called Skip. Monique’s first novel Mr Right and Other Mongrels was  released as an e-book in May 2012 and a paperback in June. Hearts Afire, her second novel was released in October 2012 and Alphabet Dating in May 2013.  Building Attraction was released in late 2013 and Monique is busily working on her next flirty romance.

Website: http://moniquemcdonell.weebly.com/blog.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MoniqueMcDonellAuthor

Twitter: @MoniqueMcDonell

 

Jenn McLeod

Jenn J McLeod writes Australian contemporary fiction about friendship, family and small country towns keeping big secrets. Her Seasons Collection of four novels (with Simon & Schuster) will keep her busy until 2016 – at least!

Website: www.jennjmcleod.com

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/JennJMcLeod.Books

Twitter: @JennJMcLeod

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The Next Big Thing Blog Series: My Debut Novel Blackwattle Lake

I’ve been tagged in The Next Big Thing by Helene Young  who writes Romantic Suspense. Helene has written the Border Watch series, the latest of which is Burning Lies. Find out more at her wonderful website http://www.heleneyoung.com/

So, this blog post is where I tell you about my current or next book by answering these questions, and then tag another author to tell you about their Next Big Thing. As my next novel is very vague and still coming together I’ve chosen to tell you about my debut novel which was published in December by Hachette.

A captivating story about learning to forgive.

What is the title of the book? Blackwattle Lake.

Where did the idea come from for the book? It was a combination of a couple of things. I decided to do Nano (national novel writing month) in 2009. For the uninitiated, it’s a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. As my first novel (as yet unpublished) took me 5 years plus I was keen to write something fast and furious. I had an image in my head of a woman standing at the gate of a country property unable to get in as the gate was locked. That was, and still is, the opening scene of the book.

What genre does the book fall under? I write Women’s Fiction which it falls under but also the Rural Fiction genre. It has some elements of romance but I wouldn’t call it a Rural Romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
My daughters and I had some fun coming up with these answers! It had to be an all Australian cast. For the lead character, Eve, I would definitely choose Asher Keddie (with her hair darkened). Her ex, Jack, could be Grant Bowler.

     

This picture of him is exactly how I imagined Jack. And Miranda Otto is perfect for Cat, Eve’s former best friend. Eric Bana is suave enough to be a great Marcus, Eve’s most recent ex. Colin Friels would be great as Harry, the confrontational neighbour, and Jackie Weaver as Margo his lovely wife.

      

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? A woman inherits her childhood home and returns to deal with the ghosts of her past.

Who is your publisher? My publisher is Hachette Australia published my book after it was selected for their manuscript Development Program which is run each year in conjunction with the Queensland Writers Centre.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? The very first draft of 50,000 words was finished in one month. I revised it developed it further over about 6 months before submitting it to the development program. Then there was another few months of revision before the final submission.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? A difficult question as when I first wrote it I wasn’t aware of the rural fiction genre. Other books in that genre, like North Star by Karly   Lane and Jilted by Rachael johns are similar in that they have a strong female character and a rural setting but Blackwattle Lake doesn’t have the romance they both do. It’s more about the main character’s search for a place to belong and find herself.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? I spend a lot of time with horses and I wanted to write about them.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? The setting is quite idyllic. It’s a very Australian story and while it starts slowly the drama builds along the way. It’s a fairly quick read and, I hope, a good escape.

I’m tagging Jenn Mcleod to tell you about her Next Big Thing on Wednesday 16th January. Jenn has a whole host of interviews with current and upcoming authors on her blog so drop by and check it out. Her new book a House for all Seasons will be out on March 1st.

i hope you enjoyed finding out more about Blackwattle Lake.Thanks for visiting.

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