Greetings from the fertile ground that is Teaser Tuesday, the blog series where I share snippets from new and past releases, and works-in-progress, and occasionally invite writing friends to join in the fun.

This week I’m delighted to host rural romance author Alissa Callen, who, you may recall, was a guest on the blog previously when Friday Feast was running. If you’re feeling hungry, I suggest you check out her recipes for Chocolate Chip Cookies and Banana and Chocolate Chip Muffins, and Lamingtons and Peanut Butter and Choc Chip cookies. They’re delish!

Alissa has a gorgeous new release called The Long Paddock – love that title, LOVE IT! – and she’s here to today to tell you a little about the story, and give you a peek at some of the action.

But wait, there’s more!

Perhaps if you read to the end you might find something special, like a giveaway. So don’t hang about, read on.

In my new Born in Boots series, Woodlea, the town of windmills is fictitious. However the landscape surrounding the small rural town and the experiences of the local community are very much grounded in reality.

The first book, The Long Paddock, is a story woven from the scents, sights and sounds of my everyday central western world. Real life has a way of wriggling into my words much like how our Jack Russell sneaks through the kitchen door of our farm house. From a cow who loves eating carrots, to a mini-tornado, to a country street transformed by yarn-bombing, threads of my fiction are true-to-life.

To win a copy of my first rural, Beneath Outback Skies, I’d love to hear about an animal, event or a person in your life that could also easily slip into the pages of a book.

It felt like a lifetime since Denham Rigby had smelled eucalyptus.

He closed his eyes and drew in a slow and deep lungful of air. Beside him the leaves of a gum tree rustled as a spring breeze eddied around him and tugged at his hat brim. He caught the faint and acrid scent of cabbage. Near the historic Woodlea cemetery a pungent canola crop had to be in flower. He opened his eyes. Sure enough, beyond the hill on which he stood stretched an undulating landscape of canola-yellow.

He looked west to where his family farm, Claremont, lay. Phil, the farm manager, had taken advantage of the early rain and the paddocks were an ordered patchwork of colour. Denham’s attention shifted a little to the left. Here no winter crops rippled in the breeze. Instead, caught in a pocket drought, the land was bleached and colourless. It was as though Mother Nature had simply run out of inspiration. His jaw tightened. Cressy would have to watch her water. Their properties might be side-by-side but Claremont was the only farm to now enjoy any river frontage.

He rubbed the back of his neck beneath the collar of the blue western shirt he’d bought in some small Wyoming town he couldn’t remember the name of. All thoughts of Cressy and any concerns he might have about her unreliable water supply were off limits. Three years ago he’d lost the right to look out for her. All he could do now was not complicate the new life she’d made without him. Bitterness coursed through him. A life he had had to set her free to live.

He swung away from the graves of his father and brother. He’d come to the cemetery to make peace with the past, not to obsess about the things he couldn’t change. All he could do was keep on taking one day at a time. He might have made it as a world champion bull rider but that didn’t spare him from being gossiped about or from being compared to his father. His hands fisted and he carefully relaxed them. He was nothing like the unemotional man who’d raised him.

He rolled his shoulders to force the tension locking his muscles to release. His emotions were as volatile as an electric storm and he needed to get them under control. Tomorrow all eyes would be on him and all tongues quick to comment. He strode towards his ute, and heard tyres crunch on gravel. He glanced at the cemetery entrance … and froze.

Mouth dry, he stared at the battered ute that rattled across the cattle grid flanked by two white picket fences. He knew every dent and every panel scratch. Just like he knew every micro expression of the driver whose attention remained focused on the dirt road.

Cressy.

*

I told you The Long Paddock was gorgeous and naturally you want a copy, oh yes you do. You can purchase it right now from:

Booktopia | Angus & Robertson Bookworld | Fishpond.com.au
Amazon.com | Kobo | iBooks |Google Play |Barnes & Noble Nook

Now, as we hinted at in the introduction, there’s a…

GIVEAWAY!

Simply tell us about an animal, event or a person in your life that could also easily slip into the pages of a book and you’ll go into the draw to win a signed paperback copy of Alissa’s debut rural romance Beneath Outback Skies.

As many of you will know from reading my The Story Behind book pages and Secret Things blog posts, I’ve included lots of animals from my life in my books, from dogs to horses and a menagerie in-between. But one of these days I’m going to have a character just like my grandmother. She cracked me up with some of the things she used to come out with and I’m sure readers would love her.

What about you? What people, animals, events or places from your life would make great reading? Share and you could win.

Please note: giveaway closes midnight Friday AEDT, 10^th March 2017. Open internationally, rah!

If you’d like to learn more about Alissa, please visit her website. You can also connect via Facebook.