AUSTRALIA - MY BEAUTIFUL CORNER OF THE WORLD - MARGARET TANNER

Being an Aussie, I am taking the liberty of changing one of our Blog themes to - Beautiful Australia.

I love a sunburnt country                   
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me

This extract is from the famous Australian poem by author and poet, Dorothea Mackellar (1885 – 1968). Many people thought it should have become Australia’s national anthem instead of Advance Australia Fair.

We are an island nation. My ancestors fought and died to keep it free. Fortunately, I was never called upon to make such a sacrifice. My small contribution is that my historical novels are all set in Australia.

Our climate can be a harsh one, bitter in winter in some places and like a furnace in others.  We have deserts, wonderful beaches, soaring mountains, often snow capped, large tracts of virgin bushland with trees and fauna found nowhere else in the world.  We also have lush tropical rain forests.

Our most famous animal is of course, the kangaroo, with the koala not far behind.

I hope that one day, at least some of you will journey to the land “down under.” I can guarantee that you will love us.

My website:  http://www.margarettanner.com/

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ROSES - MARGARET TANNER

Roses are my favourite flower. My husband thinks I am obsessed with them.  I always wear rose perfume, Bush Rose, Musk Rose. The Yardley (English company) Rose is a lovely perfume, as sweet and fragrant as its name sake.
I have to confess that my garden is full of roses. Hubby hates them with a passion because he thinks they deliberately jump out and stick their thorns into him.
I love old fashioned roses the best. They may not be quite as colourful as the modern day varieties, but they always have a gorgeous perfume.  Just Joey, a beautiful large bloomed orange rose with a delightful perfume is one of my favourites.  Another favourite is a blood red rose named Oklahoma, the perfume is as heady as wine.
It amazes me how often I seem to put a flower in the title of my romance novels, or describe garden scenes. It must have been an instinctive thing because I don’t recall actively trying to do this.

One of my published novels was titled The English Rose.  It has, after a re-write, been released by The Wild Rose Press (TWRP) as Frontier Wife. Holly And The Millionaire is another novel from TWRP. The heroine, Holly has a daughter called Lilly. Daphne is the name of my heroine in The Trouble With Playboys from TWRP. I have also written a short story, Call Of The Apple Blossom.  Can you see a pattern here?

          
 Whiskey Creek Press, previously published Savage Utopia and its sequel Stolen Birthright singularly, but have recently re-released them in a 2 for 1 e-book, which is available from Whiskey creek Press and Amazon Kindle.  No flower scenes in these two stories.

SAVAGE UTOPIA

On board the convict ship taking them to the penal colony of Australia, Maryanne Watson and Jake Smith meet and fall in love, but Jake hides a terrible secret that will take him to the gallows if it ever comes out.
On arrival in Sydney the lovers are separated. Maryanne is sent to work for the lecherous Captain Fitzhugh. After he attacks her she flees into the wilderness and eventually meets up with Jake who has escaped from a chain gang.  They set up home in a hidden valley and Maryanne falls pregnant.  Will Jake come out of hiding to protect his fledgling family? And how can love triumph over such crushing odds?

STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT

Can an English aristocrat ever hope to marry the daughter of convicts?
Georgina, a wild colonial girl, is brought up by O’Rourke, a rough and ready Irishman who she believes is her uncle. While helping the bushranger Johnny Dawson escape from prison she meets and falls in love with a dashing young English aristocrat, the Honourable Marcus Lindquist.
When Johnny Dawson is ambushed and killed, Marcus finally learns the secret of what has bound the young outlaw to Georgina. Meanwhile, twelve thousand miles across the sea, Marcus’ Godfather, is plotting Georgina’s death to keep his dark secrets from ever seeing the light of day.

http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=982

GETTING TO KNOW MARGARET TANNER

 

Margaret Tanner reporting in for my very first blog at The Roses Of Prose. A proud moment indeed. I will be posting here on the 11^th and 23^rd of each month.

Well, I guess I should introduce myself to those who don’t know me. I come from the land down under, Australia. The land of the kangaroo, koala, platypus and emu, just to name a few of our unique animals. Much of our flora and fauna is found no where else in the world.

We have a fascinating landscape, beautiful white sandy beaches, rugged mountains that are snow-covered in winter. We have rain forests and deserts. In fact, believe it or not, Australia is one of the driest and oldest continents on earth. We are English speaking with our own special Aussie slang.

The first white people to settle in Australia (1788), came mainly from England, Ireland and Scotland. We started out as a penal colony. Somewhere for the English to dump their unwanted convicts, and thus our early history is a blood-stained one.

Slowly a British society evolved based on the distinctions between convicts and free settlers, but as some of the convicts prospered once they gained their freedom, they tried to erase the stain of their convict blood and many of our early documents were destroyed. The discovery of gold in the 1850’s caused another wave of mass migration, this time comprised of many nations, although those from the British Isles were still the most dominant.

I am multi-published with Whiskey Creek Press and The Wild Rose Press. I enjoy delving into the pages of history as I carry out my research for the Australian historical romance novels that I love to write. No book is too old or tattered for me to trawl through, no museum too dusty, or cemetery too overgrown. Many of my novels have been inspired by true events, with one being written around the hardships and triumphs of my pioneering ancestors in frontier Australia.

In the course of research, and also because I have always been interested in the 1^st World War, I have toured the battlefields of France, Belgium and Turkey. A truly poignant experience. I spent time (10 minutes was long enough) inside an old historical jail, just to see how it felt, because one of my heroine’s was imprisoned for a crime she did not commit.  The thing that affected me the most was the cold. It was absolutely freezing in this stone cell, even though it was hot outside.

I am a member of the Romance Writers of Australia, the Melbourne Romance Writers Group (MRWG) and EPIC.  Oh, and I have won a few literary awards along the way too, but being a modest little violet, I won’t bore you with a blow by blow description.

If you would like to find out more about me and my books, my website is:   http://www.margarettanner.com/

My publishers are:

The Wild Rose Press    http://www.thewildrosepress.com/margaret-tanner-m-281.html

Whiskey Creek Press    www.whiskeycreekpress.com

My next visit at The Roses of Prose blog will be on the 23^rd August, so I hope you will drop by again and say G’day to me and my fellow talented roses of prose.