Author Spotlight: Fiona Marsden is Here with an Upcoming Release and a Fun Giveaway!

We have a winner! Janine, you were chosen at random as Fiona’s giveaway recipient. She will be in touch with you. Thanks a million to everyone who stopped by! We do love connecting with our readers!

I’m so happy to welcome Fiona Marsden, another author pal from “down under,” to the Spotlight this week.

Fiona Marsden has lived most of her life in rural Australia, sharing her five-acre block with kangaroos, wallabies, and the odd koala and possum. Born and bred in Queensland, Australia, Fiona grew up in the far west of the state, lived for several years in Brisbane and is now settled on the Granite Belt in the rural south east.

Fiona has worked as a governess, a clerk, a teacher aide, an enrolled nurse, a disability support worker, and a financial manager. She has also glued thousands of plant samples on card for storage.

Married with seven children and two grandchildren, Fiona spent the last thirty-two years working and advocating in the disability sector serving on a local committee for thirty years and as project manager for the purchase and construction of buildings for the service.

Writing has always been a passion, from poetry published in the Courier Mail and school annuals to fanfiction in the seventies, before we had the internet. She honed her craft writing grant applications that require a vivid imagination, to finally finding her place writing happy endings. She is an avid reader and has read most genres over the years.

Fiona has been fortunate in winning and placing in a number of writing awards both here and overseas. Several stories have been published in anthologies and she has self-published several novellas and two 60k word romances.

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The floor is yours, Fiona…

Not far from Kurrajong Crossing, about a half hour drive away, is a small town called Maiden’s Landing, situated on Redemption Creek in the Cold Country world created by Dakota Harrison and myself.

Redemption Creek is my little series with Escape Publishing, a digital first publisher based in Australia under the HarperCollins umbrella.

The first book in the series was A Matter of Trust, dealing with the return of Doctor Morgan Cavanaugh to town and a reunion with his first love, Becca Walters. It came out in 2021 and won the Koru Award of Excellence from the Romance Writers of New Zealand organisation.

Finally, nearly three years later, with a whole lot of life happening in between, Morgan’s cousin Shayne gets his story.

Shayne met Cassie six months ago on a trip to the city for “the Ekka”. Our version of a State Fair. The Royal Queensland Show was originally called the Brisbane Exhibition and the Australian tendency to shorten everything meant that it remains “the Ekka” no matter what the powers that be want to call it.

Shayne Smith is a sheep farmer and the Ekka is when country farmers are most likely to end up in the big smoke, aka Brisbane, to exhibit their animals or produce. A single dad, he gave up on relationships after realising that the women he’d let into his life were more interested in the financial security he offered. Meeting Cassie made him wish he could take a chance. But he believes her to be a dyed-in-the-wool city slicker and he’d been burnt before with a woman from the city.

Cassie has reasons for not contacting Shayne to tell him about her at-risk pregnancy until now. She has no idea that she’s about to make his already complicated life a lot more complicated. Losses in her past make her oversensitive to risk and she doesn’t really believe in happy endings.

With sex off the table, these two have to get to know each other in a whole different way.

A Chance to Believe is not as steamy as the books in the With Love from Kurrajong Crossing series so if you like something a little milder, this might work for you. There is still all the angst and the romance and, of course, Cassie and Shayne finding their way to a well-deserved HEA.

GIVEAWAY! A $10 Amazon gift card is up for grabs. For a chance at this fun prize, just tell Fiona your favorite romance trope? Second chance? Hidden baby? Friends to lovers? Enemies to lovers? Tell us which kind of story you love best. We’ll draw a winner at random on Saturday, February 3.

A Chance to Believe

Can a fling turn into a family?

After a chance meeting in Brisbane, Shayne Smith and Cassie Long had a perfect fortnight together. But when Shayne returned to his historic sheep property, they both assumed there was no future in a relationship between a city girl and a grazier.

Six months later, Cassie arrives at Maiden’s Landing to let Shayne know they made more than memories in their brief idyll. She has no expectations, only a duty to let him know.

Shayne’s life is already complicated with a property to run and a sixteen-year-old daughter growing up fast. He never expected the woman he can’t forget to turn up on his doorstep bringing news that is all too familiar.

Fiercely independent Cassie isn’t asking anything of him, but he persuades her to stay at his homestead until the babies are born. Cassie’s difficult pregnancy means that any possibility of romance must be put on hold – despite the intense attraction they feel for each other. How long can they resist? And will each of them overcome their own baggage so they can build a future together?

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