It is my very great pleasure to welcome one of my best buddies to take tea with me today...as indeed we do in real life.
Fiona Lowe, HMB Medical, single title contemporary author and now indie author, RITA Award winner and old chum (and my 'go to' girl)... It is lovely to have you here today.
You and I have
shared many a cup of tea and other, slightly stronger, beverages. Perhaps you can tell me what is
your most memorable cup of tea?
Thanks for inviting me to tea, Ms. Stuart! It’s lovely to be here. I’ve drunk cups of tea all
around the world but the most memorable has to be the one I had at 5am on a
small station in the far north of Malaysia. We’d spent the night on a very over
crowded 3rd class train, complete with people on the roof and
chickens in the carriage. Unbeknown to us, our night of travel coincided with
the eve of Hari Raya Haji, a huge Muslim festival and public holiday and
everyone was trying to get home. That train journey is my most memorable! Anyway, at 5am and with no sleep, we fell out
onto our station and I had what I call ‘The night duty nausea.’ I felt so sick
and I sank onto a bench seat and said, “I need something to eat.”
My ever-loving DH went looking for food and came across a
man squatted down in front of a little fire making chapattis and sweet, hot
tea. Now I am usually a black tea with milk, no sugar and served in a china cup
girl, but here I was holding a glass filled with black tea, no milk and about
an inch of sugar at the bottom. It was
THE BEST glass of tea I’ve ever had. I got a second. I ate the chapattis and
fifteen minutes later, I was a new woman! I have never forgotten that cup of
tea and just thinking about it braces me with new energy!
You began your
writing career writing medical romances for HMB. Your career has taken a few
interesting turns along the road. What
was the best career decision you made?
I love writing medical romances but they don’t go on shelf
in the USA which is a big market . I was frustrated by that and I also found myself at a point where I was feeling
creatively stale so I wrote Boomerang Bride. It
was a totally different book. For a start it was a single-title novel of 93,000
words with scope to tell more than two people’s stories. What I discovered was
that it flexed different writing muscles but it also strengthened the ones I
had. It brought the joy of writing back and now I love writing the two
different styles of books.
Best career decision? You know, I don’t feel I have made
one. I haven’t had a lot of choice. I know we all hear the stories of a few
lucky people who have publishing houses bidding against each other to secure
their book, but although we hear those stories, they are in the minority. Boomerang Bride
faced 12 print house publishing rejections and I was left with a book I
believed in and no one else did. I guess I had two choices back in 2010 when
the publishing world was very different from the one we know today and
publishing yourself was barely known. I either left it on the computer or I
took a punt on it with an eBook publishing house. I chose the then new Carina
Press because it was the digital-first arm of Harlequin. Carina Press have been very supportive of me
and their authors. It’s only because of their offer to print one eBook per
author that made it possible for Boomerang Bride to
be entered into the RWA Rita award and Australian RuBY award.
You recently launched
yourself into the world of “Indie” publishing with a 12,500 word short
story, what was the inspiration for that
story?
Last year I rode 591km/367miles over nine days on the Great
Victorian Bike Ride. Three thousand cyclists turned tiny little towns into tent
cities as we cycled up and over steep hills, through soporific heat and
hypothermia-inducing cold. As I cycled along, I dreamed up a story about two
fictitious people on the ride and then used the journey as the back drop to the
story. On The
Road Again is a reunion story. Can people change and if so, can past hurts
be forgiven? It’s the perfect length to read just before you turn out the light
at night.
I was with you at RWA
National when you won the RITA for BOOMERANG BRIDE (which then went on to win
the RUBY – the Australian equivalent), what were your emotions when your name
was announced and what has it meant to you since then?
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| Fiona, Alison and the golden lady! |
I was so blessed to have you as my ‘date’ that night! I had taken the nomination as a win
because I really thought I had no chance against the other more established,
single-title authors. So that night, I was there for the glitz and glamour and
to see if the author I had predicted to win, would. I remember hearing
‘Boomerang’ and then this whoop of noise went around the auditorium (there were
a lot of Carina Press authors and Australian writing mates there cheering - AS: and your "date" was shrieking like she was a teenager at a Bieber concert!) and
I remember you hugging me as disbelief
rushed me. I know Angela James , the executive editor of Carina Press, and I
shared an ‘OMG, really?’ look. The win
took a few days to sink it. I kept stroking my golden lady and then getting out
the cleaning cloth to remove my sticky prints ;-) (and of course everybody else had to have their cuddle too!)
The night I won the RuBY, Angela James texted me to say
Boomerang Bride was going into print in the USA. Right now it’s out in mass
market paperback!
Have you left the
world of HMB Medicals behind?
Not at all! In fact, I have a medical romance out this
month. Gold Coast
Angels; Bundle of Trouble is a stand-alone novel but it’s also book three
in the Gold Coast Angels series. The other three books have been written by
Marion Lennox, Amy Andrews and Fiona McArthur.
Bundle of
Trouble is a recovery book; two people have been hammered by life and are
finding their way back and daring to dream again.
Which brings us to
your “Wedding” trilogy. I loved, loved, loved Boomerang Bride and I am
currently reading the second one. What was the inspiration behind this series?
Oddly enough, the inspiration came from a rejection I got on
Boomerang Bride.
That particular editor wanted the book to focus more on the town. Of course,
that would have made Boomerang
Bride a totally different book so I thought, I’ll write a small-town
wedding series and that is how Wedding
Fever and Whitetail, Wisconsin, with its large cast of characters came into
be. Saved by
the Bride (April 2012) is the first novel where the good citizens of
Whitetail are trying to save their town from financial ruin and a mayor who
appreciates their best intentions but thinks she knows best. Of course there is
a very sexy business man who is a fish-out-of-water, a dysfunctional family and
a lot of laughs and the occasional tear.
Picture
Perfect Wedding (August 2012) features the sexiest dairyman you’ve ever
met, a determined wedding photographer
and a family facing the biggest change in six generations. The final
book in the series comes out late January and is Runaway
Groom; an Aussie riding from Antarctica to Alaska on a Harley Davidson.
What’s his worst nightmare? Being stuck in a town obsessed with weddings so
yeah, I made that happen ;-)
Talking about bikes….both motor and the push bike variety,
have you got a story? Share it with me and go into the draw for a copy of my
short story, On The Road Again http://www.fionalowe.com/on%20the%20road%20again.html.
A bit about Fiona:
Fiona Lowe is a RITA® and R*BY award-winning, multi-published
author with Harlequin and Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or in the
mid-west of the USA, they feature small towns with big hearts, and warm,
likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she's not writing stories,
she's a weekend wife, mother of two 'ginger' teenage boys, guardian of 80 rose
bushes and often found collapsed on the couch with wine. You can find her
at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN (A romantic short story)
“Dr. Felicity Hamilton-Smith desperately needs a change of scene so she
signs up for a ten-day bike ride around Victoria. The last thing she expects is
to run slap-bang into her former fiancé. For her, the past is over and best
left behind, or so she thinks.
The last time Dr. Drew Baxter saw Felicity was when he broke her heart
when he left to serve in Afghanistan. Now, seeing her again, is breaking his”
Available in all eBook formats for 99cents (AS: !) from
Smashwords http://bit.ly/171GM13
Amazon http://amzn.to/171GDdS
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| An author can dream... getting my dirty fingerprints of the Golden Lady when FL wasn't watching! |
