This post by Lizzy Chandler is the last in our series by Escape authors nominated for 2015 ARRA awards, to be announced in March. Good luck to all our nominated Escape Artists!
What an honour and surprise to have been nominated for Favourite New Romance Author for 2015. Thanks to everyone who voted!
I had two novels published in 2015, both of which were finalists in the Clendon Award some years ago (under different titles).
My first novel, Snowy River Man, is a rural romance about Katrina Delaney, a twenty-something woman with a tragic past who dreams of the whereabouts of a missing child. The child’s father, Jack Fairley, is someone with whom she had a one-night stand years before, a grazier whose property spans Snowy River country. Jack’s son Nick has gone missing after a country rodeo and Katrina volunteers to help look for him, even though she dreads being reminded of the hurtful events that kept her and Jack apart.
My second novel, By Her Side, is a contemporary romantic suspense set in Sydney and the Blue Mountains; it’s about Rory Sutton Whitfield, the granddaughter of a wealthy businessman who is involved in a hit-and-run accident. Recovering in hospital, the grandfather insists on hiring someone to look after her until the cause of the accident is known. The temporary bodyguard he chooses is the passer-by who saved Rory from injury, undercover detective Vince Maroney, a man grieving the death of his estranged wife. Vince doesn’t want to play the hero, and Rory certainly doesn’t like people telling her what to do, so when they’re forced together, sparks fly.
About me: I’ve been writing for over twenty years, so having these novels published has been the fulfilment of a dream, but if it wasn’t for a psychic friend who urged me to send my manuscripts to Escape, I might still be dreaming! I’m an avid reader, love a happy ending, and especially enjoy the tension and excitement of suspense. Some readers might know me from my work as the founder of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. (If you love books by Australian women in all genres, check out our blog!)
I’d like to thank everyone at ARRA for their amazing awards, and wish good luck to all nominated authors, especially our Escapees.
She would trust him with her life. But can either of them trust their hearts?
By the time I finished writing 
The babies in Chieftain in the Making were twins. My mother-in-law had twins and I used her experience as the basis for Melinda, our heroine—the first birth was easy, the second a breach birth. Some readers weren’t too happy that Melinda had an aversion to the second twin, but as an author I try to get into character’s head and Melinda is young and inexperienced—deserted by her lover, with no mother to advise her. She believed her second twin’s birth would kill her. Don’t forget she lived at the beginning of the 12th century. And is it any wonder she wasn’t too happy about being abducted by Rob—a man determined to marry her, determined his sons won’t go through life labelled bastards, the way he had been. On a lighter note, I also used the way my twin sisters-in-law interacted with one another as toddlers to show Rob’s sons love each other.
The Escapades 