Historical Romance Archives - Page 2 of 5

Sovereign Hill ~ Winter Wonderlights

July 31, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Dear Ink Dots Readers, the engines are humming for the release of Carry Me Away, book 2 in my Blue Wren Shallows series. I am WAY beyond excited to share the beautiful cover, first chapter, and endorsements… and in the next few weeks I will have all the links here on my website and pretty much anywhere else authors take happy book news. Stay tuned…!!!

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to in my quest to fill the creative well.

For an author besotted with all things Victorian Era, Australian Colonial, and just olde worlde, Ballarat’s living gold rush museum is one of my favourite places to visit. And in the last few years, July is a month not to be missed.

Only 90 minutes from home, the 25 acre historical village of Sovereign Hill draws me like a moth to a freshly dipped tallow candle. Re-enactments, demonstrations, and the opportunity to wander and become lost in the heart of the 1850s is more than my idea of fun. It fuels the storyteller in me like nothing else.

Add the smell of real wood fires, the chill of winter, and a great big dollop of Christmas-in-July cheer, and I am right there. Sprinkle ‘SNOW’ over everything once dusk hits (even if it’s machine made and not the real thing) and I’m in another realm of glee.

I’ve have a romance series set on the Australian goldfields bubbling away for a few years now. Once I complete the Blue Wren Shallows series, set on ‘my’ beautiful Phillip Island, I plan to shift my attention to the wonders and dramas of this the 1850s.

Until then, I shall make do with the memories my Beloved and I captured this year when we visited Sovereign Hill for the Winter Wonderlights spectacular. I hope you enjoy sneaking into Australia’s Gold Rush Years with me, too.

Happy winter reading, or summer reading… wherever you’re cuddled up with a good book.

Dotti

Phillip Island in the Winter

June 29, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I spent most of last week at Phillip Island, working through the bones of what will become Book 3 in my Blue Wren Shallows series.

For those of you waiting on Book 2, Carry Me Away... it’s currently (happy-squeal!) in the lap of a few of my all-time favourite authors who are reading for endorsement, and my talented cover artist is putting her finishing touches on the cover.

I’m most grateful to those who continue to ask about Carry Me Away. I can’t wait for you to meet the characters who come to life in the telling of this story and cause their own trouble in Shadrach and Finella’s world. (Carry Me Home)

Until then, I want to share with you last Monday’s sunset and my scarf-wrapped walk to Red Rocks and back home ~ a true riot of setting sun and clouds playing in the shallows.

Somehow, I managed to sneak into the one majestic hour of stillness over an island battered by rain most of the week I was there.

Depending on whether I had my back to the sun or walked towards it, my phone camera captured all manner of wintery light and reflections. And even in the stillness, the ominous power of the clouds hung above me in a bruised sky.

And that, dear readers, is why I run away to write on this beautiful island.

To breathe in the beach after a storm. To capture the sun that falls into the horizon, and to wade through the shallows where my characters play and fight and learn to love.

These photos are unedited. But sometimes I like to run them through pretty filters and I post on Instagram.

You can follow me there for more photos.

Meanwhile, please join me on this quick stroll through the Blue Wren Shallows.

Phillip Island, Australia

Sunset over Phillip Island, Australia

Red Rocks Beach, Phillip Island, Australia

Sunset, Phillip Island, Australia

Boats ashore, Phillip Island, Australia

Sunset, Phillip Island, Australia

Seagrass, Phillip Island, Australia

Sunset, Phillip Island, Australia

Australia ~ A place you feel (says chris hemsworth)

May 29, 2019 · Leave a Comment

The grapevine, looking every bit the Queen of the Garden at Crabapple House, Autumn 2019

May is my favourite month because I celebrate my birthday AND Mother’s Day… only days apart. And because these special days occur when the weather is flush with brilliant rubies and saffrons, I have grown to love autumn more than any other season.

This year, I have even more reasons to LOVE the month of May. Many of you have found this journal page, and website, and my book, Carry Me Home, thanks to this month’s Christian Historical Romance Book Bundle Giveaway. (If you haven’t checked out the 9 FREE books on offer, you have until the end of May to take your pick.)

And so a big warm WELCOME to those of you who are newly arrived to all things Ink Dots. I’m delighted you’ve downloaded Shadrach and Finella’s story. If you’ve journeyed with these characters to the end, I am most grateful! Let me know what you thought of the story in the comment section below.

Fiction set in Australia may be something you’re already fond of, or something that’s completely new to you. Either way, I wanted to share this fabulous Tourism Australia link, with voiceover by Chris Hemsworth. If you haven’t opened your copy of Carry Me Home, here’s a peek into the majestic Australian landscape my characters occupy.

Click Here for Chris Hemsworth’s Invitation to Australia

Ventnor Beach, Phillip Island, Australia

What did you think of that quick tour of our beautiful country? I hope it inspires you to read or perhaps even re-read Carry Me Home. Because in a few short months, Carry Me Away, book 2 in the Blue Wren Shallows series will be ready for your reading pleasure.

So what are you waiting for? Step right into yesteryear and the beauty of Australia’s beaches and windswept cliffs and the Blue Wren Shallows of Phillip Island in… Carry Me Home.

Happy Reading,

Dotti

Nearly There…

March 20, 2019 · Leave a Comment

In a year of brokenness, where the notes of life did not always play sweet music in my ears, I found myself drawn to unfamiliar quiet places. To the stillness and the echoing ache to keep writing in the midst of grief, even when I did not know how.

There were many who stood beside me in those shadows. They ached with me and I learned the sweetest whisper is ‘don’t give up, you’re nearly there.’

And if nearly there is the flicker before the dawn, the dawn itself, the… here we are… is starting to shine, bright as day, in my author heart.

Many of you have messaged this last year, quietly checking in on me in a year of mourning and gently asking about the next book in my Phillip Island, Blue Wren Shallows series. Well, dearest reader, Carry Me Away (younger sister to Carry Me Home) is on her way to YOU.

Cover reveal, promo announcements, and all the fun of releasing a book are some months away, but the excitement is bubbling up in those of us who are dressing this book for publication.

I want to thank ALL OF YOU, faithful friends, for your patience and encouragement. From the first words I ever penned in this story to the very last… I have been writing for YOU. And I am grateful for your loyalty.

If you have not already subscribed to my Reader Group, please join today. It’s the shortest road between me and you. And if you join before the end of April 2019, you could win one of three Everlasting journals.

This is an international giveaway… so what are you waiting for?
(This contest is now closed. Congratulations to winners ~ Tammy, Alina, and Ruby.)

Don’t miss out. Scroll to the bottom of this page and join today.

Blessings,

Dotti

Writing In The Pocket Of Grief

February 12, 2018 · 14 Comments

My mum’s 12 year cancer battle ended 12 days ago. In these last two and a half years she endured many months of distress including a difficult recovery from surgery last year, meant to buy her more years.

It didn’t. And now she is gone.

But her suffering has ended and if you’ve watched a loved one buckle under cancer’s cruelty, you will understand my thankfulness that God has set her free.

Free of pain. Free of confusion. Free of everything that darkened her days.

But her struggles did not define her. They were only part of her beautiful story. Her true legacy surrounds us each day. It comes over me in layers, like the beautiful writing gloves she knitted. Her warmth for my cold mornings at the keyboard.

All around me, memories of her. Her touch left in a thousand places, in all our homes.

In all our hearts.

But what about the gaping hole, and the thick silence? It grabs me by the throat and chokes hard when I least expect it. When I turn to share a snatch of conversation with her and she’s not there, anymore.

When I see the wilting floral arrangements that adorn my home in tribute to her, and know I must throw them out… because they too are dead.

How do I live as a motherless daughter? Where do I find myself, when a big piece of me is lost forever?

I go back to the story of her. A tapestry of Greek wisdom and Christian beliefs. Her cord of silly humour that still ran through the most somber of our days. Her fussiness, wound tight like a perfect braid. And her faith, which held her right up to the end, and holds me up, too. Her God, is my God. And nothing confounds Him.

The day Mum entered Palliative Care she was given a small blanket by hospital volunteers. A knitted riot of unmatched colours that in any other world, would… and should, never sit together. She smiled with me at the mess of patterns, of clashing tones and scrappy squares. Pieces, thrown together, as if by chance.

But not really. Those hospital knitters know what they’re doing.

While I held her hand, Mum breathed her last under that blanket.

I took it home and washed it. It dried on a summer breeze. Now it’s a beautiful, warm, weighted reminder of life’s unique moments and fragments. The beautiful and the ordinary, the delicate and the rough, all hooked in knitted loops. Each one holds the other in place. Each ending becomes the starting point for something new, and I am now wrapped in its comfort.

While my publication schedule changed during Mum’s illness, the words still flowed. Each day I wrote from the pocket of deepening grief.

But now… writing gloves on, I will pull the ugly-beautiful-blanket a little closer, too.

And I will publish the stories she will never read, knowing they too, are coloured pieces of me, and the happy fragments of a life that knitted us together… and made us smile.

Author Talk Snapshots

August 4, 2016 · Leave a Comment

The nights have been cold and this winter has not been mild.

Nope. Melbourne continues to deliver its iciest blast.

But my readers have showered me with warmth and love.

Rustic bookshelf, scattered sea shells…

In June, it was my privilege to speak with the wonderful women of NewHope Baptist Church, in Blackburn. These girls sure know how to manage an event. Every corner of the room was festooned with details inspired by Carry Me Home.

A million thanks, to my beautiful team…Fiona, Surette, Laura, and Robyn.

From shells to tea cups, lanterns and candles, to olde worlde books and nostalgic touches like handmade bunting… the entire room glowed with such attention to detail, I thought I may have walked into my own story-world.

And notice the carefully chosen tablecloth, matched to Finella’s skirt! Brilliant!

Many thanks to the beautiful souls who attended this Meet The Author event, and for your wonderful support! What a treat to discover such warm hearted readers.

Meeting you girls was the highlight of my June!

Old Bible

Book display

Beautiful Bunting

Vintage Books

Wonderful Readers