WISH is an ELLA finalist!

Lovely news, with WISH fast becoming the little novella that could. Self pubbed at first, WISH was picked up as a launch story for Penguin Australia’s Destiny Romance e-imprint. Once launched, WISH got airborne in that it was loaded onto Jetstar Ipads over Christmas/New Year 2012. In April 2013 it went to print and is currently available at selected Australia Post outlets. Now it’s a finalist in Romance Writers of Australia’s inaugural ELLA Award for best novella of 2012.  All good things!

So what makes WISH special? Well, it’s special to me because it’s set close to home, on the Northern Tablelands of NSW. Inverell? Glen Innes? Yes, somewhere around there. The story features a resilient single mother who’s traded her inner-city lifestyle for life in a sleepy country town. There’s a taciturn widowed cattleman (of course there is), and lots of dogs, chooks, cows, sheep, rose-bushes and pies. I’ve a soft spot for secondary character Maude, who’s loosely based on my grandmother. Maude bakes pies for the local pub. My grandmother doesn’t (my grandmother made me put that in). There’s even a villain, a mystery, windmill repair… All this and a love story too in under 30,000 words.

So thanks WISH (and publisher Destiny Romance, and Romance Writers of Australia who initiated the award), and congratulations to fellow finalists Margareta Osborne, Carolyn Wren, and Danielle Lisle.

Buy from: Destiny/A/K/iTunes