Contracts, Conversations & Cow Fairs…

About Contracts
Today my new three-book Contract for the Chalk Hill series arrived from Harlequin head office. Book 1 of the Chalk Hill Series is Water Under The Bridge, the book I was working on at the start of this year.

Luckily for me, (and hopefully for readers), Harlequin MIRA’s editors loved Water Under The Bridge and on the strength of Book 1, they’ve signed two additional titles set in fictional Chalk Hill. Book 1 will be out in spring of 2018, with books 2 and 3 following in 2019 and 2020.

You won’t find Chalk Hill on a map. It’s the first fictional town I’ve created in my writing journey and if you did have to pin Chalk Hill on a map of West Australia, you’d aim about halfway between Manjimup and Mount Barker on the Muir highway, slightly east of Rocky Gully.

The idea for the book came after a camping trip I did with hubby and our two boys in spring last year to the Porongurups and Albany… little did my travelling companions know how much I was plotting stories at the time, as we climbed the Granite Skywalk and visited the Natural Bridge and the Blowholes, and saw whales in Lucky Bay!

In Conversation
This coming Thursday July 6,  I”m thrilled to join rural romance West Australian author, Sasha Wasley, at Dymocks bookstore in Busselton. Sasha has a new book, Dear Banjo, out now – getting rave reviews. The ‘In Conversation’ is Sasha’s gig, but I’ve got myself invited along by lovely Beth Herbert of Dymocks to gatecrash the party…

Cow Fairs
Mooooo! Saturday is the big legendary festival of my hometown of #Cowaramup. Not long ago Cowaramup won the accolade of being the ‘Legendairy capital of West Australia’ and later this year we will be judged alongside other legendary state capital finalists, to find the ‘legendairy’ capital of Australia. I’ll keep you posted!

This Saturday marks the birthday for the Cowaramup cows – the life-size herd of fibreglass cows you’ll find in and around Cowaramup’s main street and its parks… Have you visited our cows? It’s great to see the joy the cows have brought so many visitors to our town, and to see that businesses in the town are enjoying the benefits of having people stop and stay a while in the town, rather than dash through…

Saturday’s fair is called Deja-Moo – the Legendary Country Fair.

It kicks off at 9am on Saturday. Apart from a whole heap of family fun, there are many stall-holders and exhibitions. If you’re planning to come to Deja-Moo – please come and find me with my books in the Cowaramup Hall. You can check out my Cowaramup-set Butterfly House book, Who Killed The Bride?, which I always think of as: ‘Bridget Jones meets the Cowtown Cows…’

I’d love to have a chat! If I was any good at baking or craft, I’d have cow cupcakes and butterfly cookies… but I don’t have any of those (because I’m crap at baking and craft). I do, however, have lolly snakes!

xx Lily