Author Spotlight: Fiona & Dakota Are Back in Kurrajong Crossing and There’s a Giveaway!

Debra Pruss, congratulations! You are the winner of Fiona and Dakota’s giveaway! They will be in touch! Thanks to everyone who stopped by! We love our readers!

I’m so delighted to welcome Fiona Marsden and Dakota Harrison back to the Spotlight. I’ve loved their With Love from Kurrajong Crossing series from Book 1 all the way through to Book 12, the final book in the series, Holding Out for a Hero, which is out now!

Fiona M. Marsden started as an avid reader. She was late in finding romance novels, but once found, they became an addiction. Considering she wrote poetry and stories from a young age, it was only logical that the next step would be to write her own romances. Her favorite genres are contemporary and historical. She recently started writing rural romance reflecting her long years of country living in regional Australia. Fiona is a hybrid author with several independently published works and contracts with Escape Publishing and Tule Publishing.

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Dakota Harrison lives in a (not so) sunny part of Queensland, Australia, with her human and fur kids, and harbors a strange love of UGG boots. K- and J-Pop feature heavily in her home, especially when drafting her novels, drawing inspiration for her heroes from the music videos and anime, much to her children’s delight and her husband’s sufferance. She loves writing both alpha and beta heroes, all of whom she tortures and makes fall to their knees before their heroines and beg for mercy.

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Fiona and Dakota, the floor is yours…

Dakota:         Working on the Kurrajong Crossing series with Fiona this last five years has been not only satisfying in an author kind of way, and has helped deepen our friendship, it’s also allowed me to achieve some pretty significant personal milestones that I’ve had since I started this journey in 2007. I’ve won two major awards in both Australia and New Zealand for two different books in the series, plus we came runner-up to JR Ward (Yes, **That** JR WARD!) for Favorite Long Running Series, something that I’m super proud of, and so very pleased to be able to share with a wonderful human being like Fiona.

Fiona:            Aw shucks, what can I say. Working with Dakota has been inspirational. Our little town has grown into such a real place in our minds and hearts it’s going to be so hard to say goodbye, even if there are more stories we hope to share sometime in the future. We’ve been so fortunate in our partnership with Tule and Kelly Hunter is a fabulous editor and really pushed us to do our best in telling these stories.

Dakota:         We recently released Book 12—the final book—and it’s been a little cathartic as a character we met in Book 1 (the Mean Girl) finally gets the chance to set things right. Pairing her with her complete opposite, our resident hippie farmer, was a stroke of genius on Fiona’s side. It was certainly interesting working on one book with another author. We took the stance of me writing Marina, and her writing Briar. We had one or two crossovers, but on a whole stuck with that, and it worked so well!

It’s also been a little bittersweet, as we both knew this was the last formal book in the series with Tule. There is the possibility of some future short stories or novellas with some side characters, but nothing full length.

Fiona:            A stroke of genius. Heheh. It was always going to be a challenge to write that last story. We are both a little possessive and there was no way I was going to let go of Briar who has been a constant and often significant character in my stories right from book three. Marina had so much going on in her life that hadn’t been on the page before so it was a real joy to see Dakota tease out the heart behind Marina’s mean girl persona. It makes a great bookend for the series, seeing Marina finally getting the hero she was holding out for, even if it wasn’t quite the kind of person she planned on.

Dakota:         While I’ve loved my time in the Crossing, and the opportunities it’s opened up for me and the people I’ve met through it, and will miss working *with* Fiona on a weekly basis, the ending of the series has also opened up the time needed to pursue another love of mine ~ Science Fiction Romance, & Fantasy Romance (Romantasy).When I started writing professionally, way back in 2007, that’s what I wrote. There was none, or, very little, and although I had success with national and international contests, major publishing houses were leery of taking on the genre.

But now, that has all changed. I write with another friend, Peta Crake, under the name Angelica Grymm. So far, she is writing the paranormal side (shifters etc), and I’m playing with the monsters 😉 . Aliens, space operas, and actual monsters. And I’m having so much FUN! Book 1 won the Australia RWA Romantic Book of the Year – Spec Fic Section in 2024, and Book 3 has finaled in the same award, and also the NZ equivalent, the Koru. I am so grateful that these stories of my heart have also connected with the readers, leading them on great adventures across the cosmos.

So, while I will miss the Crossing greatly, and working with Tule, I also owe them a lot in that it’s led me to this point in my career.

And who knows? There might just be another story down the track featuring some of our well-loved side character friends. <3

Fiona:            It’s quite strange to be sitting at my desk without another Kurrajong Crossing in progress after six years of immersing ourselves in our lovely little town. I’m not quite sure where I’m going from here. I have projects that have been on the backburner while I focussed on my contracts with Tule and Escape Publishing and it’s almost too much choice. Soon, I’m heading off for a holiday to beautiful Tasmania, and I’m hoping the natural beauty will bring clarity to my thoughts about where to go from here.

In the meantime, the entire With Love, From Kurrajong Crossing series is now in Kindle Unlimited so readers with a membership can immerse themselves, bingeing on all twelve stories.

Let us know if there are any stories about people in the Crossing you’d like to see in the future.

With Love, from Fiona and Dakota. 😉

GIVEAWAY! To celebrate Book 12 in With Love from Kurrajong Crossing series, Fiona and Dakota are giving a $10 Amazon gift card to one lucky commenter. The question is an easy one: Have you ever been to Australia? If so, where did you go in that wonderland and if not, would you like to visit down under? We’ll draw a winner on Friday morning.

Holding Out for a Hero

Marina di Maggoli knows exactly what she wants in a future partner. After years of failed matches, it’s time to look for the right kind of man to take his place beside her in Kurrajong Crossing society. Besides, with all her former friends settling down and starting families, Marina is ready to compromise on finding love for the sake of ending her unbearable loneliness.

Briar Appleton has no intention of ever having a relationship or children. He lost his mother and grandmother far too young to cancer and refuses to pass that risk onto a future generation. Teasing and tormenting the snarky, uptight Marina is something he is up for. They’ve been circling each other for years—long before he started delivering organic produce to her mother when he was a teenager and caught her looking down her nose at his recycled vintage clothing.

When the teasing turns into something more, Marina and Briar have to make choices they never planned on and take risks they always shied away from. Can they find a way to be happy together—for the sake of their new family?

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