Guest Fox – Alissa Callen

I’m really happy to introduce you all to Allisa Callen this week. I’ve recently discovered Australian rural stories and I’m loooooving them. You can only imagine my joy when Allisa accepted my offer to have her here as a Guest Fox. She writes long and short rural fiction featuring country roads, secrets, romance and the odd boot-chewing puppy. I can’t wait to read “Beneath Outback Skies”

Australia and America might occupy different hemispheres, but their history, at times, went hand in hand. Whether someone lived in the Old West or the outback, their experiences were often similar. It was just the frontier that differed. In many parts of Australia today men and women continue to carve out a life in a beautiful and often harsh land. It is the stories of these men and women that are celebrated in a booming Australian genre called ‘rural fiction.’

I’m lucky enough to live on a small slice of Australia at the gateway to the outback as well as to write in such a genre. Inspiration for my stories surrounds me, whether it is the brown snake stealing water from the dog bowl, the sun setting over the cattle yards or the resilience of bush communities in times of drought, flood or … fire.

Summer here is often scorching and this year the fire risk has been high. In January we discovered what pioneers would have learned very quickly, that humans can be powerless against Mother Nature. A bush fire consumed what little cattle feed we had left and threatened our farm house. But thanks to local volunteers and the fire brigade the only thing we lost was fence posts.

While the outback can deliver many trials it also is a place of great beauty. The vivid colours, the sense of space and the timelessness of the rugged landscape all combine to make it a special place. So special, in fact, that my heroine in Beneath Outback Skies puts her life on hold to save her historic ranch from a never ending drought. But when an unexpected guest arrives, and is not all he seems, battling the drought becomes the least of Paige Quinn’s worries.

Despite Australia and America being hemispheres apart they share a common denominator of generations making a life in a beautiful but sometimes inhospitable land. In the homegrown Australian genre of rural fiction the lives of such men and women, their struggles and their joys, are captured on every page. And with the digital-wave of eBooks such stories can be read and enjoyed no matter hemisphere you may live in.

Beneath Outback Skies (eBook)

Blurb: Paige Quinn will let nothing and no one distract her from caring for her crippled father, Connor, and fighting for her remote, drought-stricken property, Banora Downs. Least of all a surprise farm-stay guest named Tait Cavanaugh, whose smooth words are as lethal as his movie-star smile.
Except Paige can’t help noticing that, for a city-boy, Tait seems unexpectedly at home on the land. And he does ask a lot of questions…
It doesn’t matter how much he helps out or how much laughter he brings into her life, she soon suspects he is harbouring a big secret – the real reason he has come to Banora Downs…

Book/buy link:
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/alissa-callen/beneath-outback-skies-9780857980397.aspx
Face book page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Alissa-Callen-Author/355366704552838
Website:
www.alissacallen.com
List of other rural fiction authors and books:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Books-for-Country-Girls-and-Guys/409351725807505