Annie Seaton’s eco-romance is earning her a strong following, both in her Australian homeland and with readers in the United States, and it’s not difficult to see why. Her books celebrate some of Australia’s most remarkable locations, from the Daintree country to the Great Barrier Reef. That’s the setting for her latest book, Osprey Reef. Hi there, I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and in Binge Reading today Annie talks about the passion for her homeland that drives her romantic adventure stories. Every story comes alive with scenes from the remarkable Australian landscape. We’ve got three eBook copies of Osprey Reef to give away to three lucky readers. Enter the draw on our website, or on our Binge Reading Facebook page. ENTER GIVEAWAY DRAW Before we get to Annie, just a reminder. For the equivalent of a cup of coffee a month you can support the podcast and get exclusive bonus content, access to Behind The Scenes stories, tips about who’s coming up next so you can read the books ahead of time, and insights into the featured authors – and this week it’s Annie – in the Getting-To-Know-You Quick Fire Questions. All a great deal of fun. Check it out on www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading. SUPPORT BINGE READING ON PATREON Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: The novel system Annie has for doing her research How her love of nature is expressed in her books Transitioning from teaching to fulltime writer The personal history in Osprey Reef The next fabulous environment to feature in her books A Great Summer Read for charity Where to find Annie Seaton: Website: https://www.annieseaton.net/ Twitter: @annieseaton26 Facebook: @AnnieSeatonAuthor Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/series/list/5779458.Annie_Seaton.html Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/annie-seaton What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Introducing eco-adventure romance with author Annie Seaton But now here’s Annie. Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Annie and welcome to the show. It’s so good to have you with us. Eco-romance author Annie Seaton and her best selling Australian adventures Annie Seaton: Hello, Jenny. It is so good to be here, how many years later? Two, three years it’s been. Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. This is your third appearance here. That is a record. Nobody else has been on three times. The first time was to talk about your work and the second time, two years ago, was very graciously to act as host for the show when we had a 100th episode birthday. Do you know, in December we’re going to be having our 200th episode birthday. That’s how long ago it’s been. Annie Seaton: Fabulous. Jenny Wheeler: You have been busy writing away all of those two years. Your latest book is very much in your tradition of the eco-adventure romance genre. It is called Osprey Reef and it’s related to one of the formations on the Great Barrier Reef. Tell us about the attraction for you of these romances set in memorable Australian settings. Annie Seaton: We spend a lot of time traveling around this beautiful country of ours and normally I will find a setting that resonates with me and think, ooh, I could set a book there. Then I find an issue that threatens that setting and I populate it with my characters and then I give them their conflicts. It usually works like that. Osprey Reef was very different. How the Osprey Reef romance came to be written The motivation for Osprey Reef was the boat which in Osprey Reef is called the Lady Stella II. It is based on a real boat called the Elizabeth E II, which is a boat exactly the same as Stella that operates out of Mackay. It belongs to one of our family members, a nephew, and my husband has done quite a few fishing trips on it. Every time we go up, I climb onto the Lizzy, and I wander around and I look at, oh, what a beautiful old timber boat. I fell in love with the boat. Coincidentally, about three years ago our nephew rang up my husband, who as a hobby has got all of his maritime qualifications even though he was still working as a schoolteacher, and he said, I have a trip out to Osprey Reef, which is a long way offshore. It’s on the edge of the continental shelf, and I need a deckie. Just a love job. Ian took long service leave from his teaching job and went on a three-week trip out to Osprey Reef. He was my researcher for the setting because I’m too much of a squib to go so far offshore out in the ocean. My research was very much involved with the boat itself and Ian’s research was the actual setting, plus I found a wonderful DVD called Osprey Reef. It might even be a David Attenborough, and I was able to go there myself on screen. So, it was the boat that inspired it. Where real life and fiction intersect Great Barrier Reef scene Then of course my eco adventure, my ecological environmental issues that I won’t give away in our interview because there are a couple of different ones in the story. The story all came together from that, so my original inspiration was the boat. Jenny Wheeler: It did seem to me reading it, that you were also very well versed in a lot of the nautical side of things because one of your heroines is a female captain of that boat. She has to really understand sailing and how to dock a boat and all the principles of navigation. How did you cover that area? Annie Seaton: We have our own small fishing boat here so I’m familiar with port and starboard and lights and what all those things mean. I went out on the Lizzy with the nephew’s other captain, and I did a trip from the Whitsunday Islands down to Mackay. I sat up in the wheelhouse with him saying, what’s this for, what does that do, why have you got that light on, who are you talking to now? So I had a hands-on trip. But I would like to give credit to a girl who was an editing client of mine about five years ago, who kindly gave me her manuscript called Some Sailors do Wear Skirts. Courtney was the inspiration for Bethany, my character, because Courtney was the first commercial fishing captain in Australia. She worked up in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Chartering boats to sail the Whitsundays I refer to a couple of experiences in the book and they had happened to Courtney. I got permission from her to use her actual experiences, so Bethany’s maritime experience was very much based on the real experiences of a female shipping captain. When we go up to the Whitsundays, over the last 20 years I think we’ve done ten bareboat charters out to the islands, and I have to help put up the sail or put the anchor chain down or look at the charts, so I think I’ve picked up a lot of maritime knowledge by osmosis. Jenny Wheeler: A bareboat charter is where you hire a boat and sail it yourself. Annie Seaton: Yes, that’s right. With four couples. Jenny Wheeler: For people who aren’t quite familiar with the Australian environment, you live in New South Wales, don’t you? Annie Seaton: That’s correct. Halfway between Sydney and Brisbane on the coast. Jenny Wheeler: But you do a lot of traveling around the countryside for your research and we’ll get onto that a little bit later. Getting back to Osprey for a moment, how long does it take to get out there from the coast? Annie Seaton: I think it took a week. They call it steaming. It’s the nautical term. You steam out, even though you don’t have a steam engine. You’ve got to go from the marina at Mackay, up to Cooktown, then refuel, top up with water, get provisions, and then these days I believe it’s three to five days to get out there. Jenny Wheeler: What is the particular significance of that reef on the overall Great Barrier Reef? How to get to Osprey Reef – one of the Great Barrier Reef’s wonders Annie Seaton: It is an incredible dive site. It’s got canyons that go down right over the edge of the continental shelf. When my husband was out there snorkeling he was very surprised to see a lot of the coral degradation that, closer to the coast, we blame on agricultural runoff, was even out there. The coral was bleaching so far away from the shore. It’s the ocean temperatures. He was very surprised to see a lot of the coral was dead, even that far off the coast. Jenny Wheeler: Your book is a dual timeline story which moves between three generations in one family from the 1930s to the present day. That is a structure you’ve used in quite a number of your stories, the dual timeline element. What’s the attraction for you as an author? Annie Seaton: I like placing my characters in a very strong family environment. Family’s very important to me, it’s what drives me. I’m very family oriented and the lovely thing about Stella, my character in the 1930s – she is introduced into the story in a billiards hall in a place called Mount Perry in the 1930s. That was based on a true family story. My great grandfather owned the billiards hall in Mount Perry in the early 1900s, about 30 years before. I contacted the North Burnett Council and they were wonderful. They sent me photos of the town, the layout of the streets. All the parts in that first chapter or two, where Stella is in Mount Perry and walking to the railway station and leaving their home and going to the billiards hall, are absolutely factual based on the real town. Never Miss out! 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5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} A very personal connection with the story To me, when I’ve got that sort of detail, it makes my characters and their settings very real. It gives them more depth. To get back to your question about the dual timelines and the three generations, we’ve got Stella, then we’ve got Lars, her son, and Eric his son and then we’ve got Bethany. It touches in depth on the two generations, but we learn more about the generations between with family anecdotes and a bit of dialogue. I think it all contributes to the development of the mystery that I’m solving in the contemporary times. Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. The other thing I found fascinating that I hadn’t been aware of, was the suggestion that Chinese navigators were in that area before the Portuguese. Annie Seaton: Yes, it’s an alternate view of history. It’s not one that’s given much credence but we talk about it in the dialogue with Peter in the book. I did a lot of research on it. I think it’s very much a popular history, but there are apparently some Chinese maps in the National Library of Australia. That gives a little bit of mystery to it. Maybe it is true and because they were timber junks there would be no shipwrecks or anything left. They would be totally disintegrated by now. There is no way to prove – apart from the mysterious finds in my story – that it was actually a true journey or true voyage, but I like to throw it in. I like to inform because I wasn’t aware of that until I started my research and I think a lot of people go, oh, that’s interesting, when they read it. Jenny Wheeler: I certainly did. The other aspect that fascinated me was your mention about coral spawning and the fact that it hadn’t been studied scientifically until around about the 1980s. That seems incredibly recent for something so important. Weaving history and natural science into the story Undara – another eco-adventure romance from Annie Seaton Annie Seaton: I was really surprised to see that. I did a lot of reading on it. One of the things I tend to do, rather than reading popular nonfiction, is go into the academic sites and read the scientific journals. I’ll digress a little bit here, back to Undara, my last book. I did a lot of academic research about the insects and things like that, and about three weeks ago, I had an email from a gentleman whose parents used to own the station where the actual volcanic crater was located. He said that he had been contacted by the original female entomologist who had researched the original tubes in the 1980s. She had heard of my book and she wanted a copy to read it. She was one of the academics whose articles I’d read that were published back in the eighties, so it’s been sent over to her in Germany. She’s a German entomologist, and I’m waiting with bated breath to hear whether I got it right or not. Jenny Wheeler: How wonderful. Moving onto Undara because it follows a very similar pattern to Osprey Reef. These are very important genuine cave formations, and we’ll give people information about how they can go and visit them if they want to, but set in a cave formation west of Townsville in the Northern part of Queensland. How did you even hear about these things? Annie Seaton: It was another serendipitous moment in my writing life. It’s funny the way I refer to it – we were traveling from Diamond Sky research over to Daintree edits. This was six years ago. We had been to Kununurra and the Kimberley and I’d been researching for the diamond mine story and prior to that, the Daintree rainforest story was in edit. The ‘chance’ encounters which lead to storytelling We had left Kununurra and we were traveling on a back road called the Savannah Way and we stopped at a caravan park because the day was drawing to a close and back in those days we didn’t even have a caravan. We had a canvas camper trailer that we’d put up every night. We booked into the caravan park and the lovely people said, we’ve got homemade pies and pasties for lunch. That was lovely. Then she said, would you like to book in for dinner? We went, dinner? She said, yes, down the back for $12 a head, we have corn beef and white sauce and vegetables. All you do is bring your plate and your wine. Then she said, and there’s a lovely shop at the back. Jenny, you’ll be able to see this dress that I have on. I bought in the caravan park at Mount Surprise in the back of Outback Queensland about five years ago. It was coincidental. I didn’t mean to put it on today. Anyway, that was all organized – dinner and dress, and we bought a book on frogs at the bookshop. It was an incredible little place. Then she said, do you want to go on a tour? We went, a tour to where, because we’re in a dry paddock in the middle of the Outback. She said to the tubes. What tubes? She said, the Undara Lava Tubes. I had never heard of them, and when I do library talks, it’s 50/50. 50% of the people will say, we’ve been there, they are amazing, and the other 50% say, we’ve never heard of them. Undara’s remarkable volcanic tubes Undara Lava Tubes in Queensland, Australia We did the tour. I was walking up the hill to the volcanic crater and the guide was telling me about the cocky apple trees. I said, the indigenous people in the Daintree use them to treat burns. He said, how did you know that? I said, I’m an author. And he said, well, you might be interested to hear that 90% of the tubes have never had humans in them. They have only just started to be explored and who knows what’s down there. It was one of those moments. That’s when Emlyn developed and became an entomologist. Jenny Wheeler: For those who haven’t heard of the lava tubes, give us a little bit of an explanation about their significance and what they’re like. Annie Seaton: It was a volcano that erupted 160 million years ago, halfway between Cairns and Townsville on the Northern Queensland coast and about 260 kilometers inland. When the lava spewed out it sat on top of the ground because it’s very flat ground, and the lava went out for 200 or 300 kilometers towards the Newcastle Ranges and formed tubes. Over the millions of years, these tubes disintegrated and have turned into caves and tree roots. There are lots that are still sealed, and lots that are open. Two or three months ago when we were up in North Queensland researching my 2023 book, we went back to Undara and visited. The owner of Undara Experience heard that we were there and that I was Annie Seaton who’d written the book, and he made a point of seeking me out and sitting with me and telling me how much he loved the book and how many people have come to Undara since they’ve read the book, which was wonderful. A wondrous world of insects waiting to be discovered underground Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. Can you walk inside some of them? Annie Seaton: Oh, yes. It caters very much more for tourists now than five years ago. There are wooden steps going down, there are boardwalks. When we were there this year, it was fascinating because we went into one of the big caves. They had a lot of rain up there last summer and the caves flooded. The guides and the people who work at Undara Experience and the owners were snorkeling in the caves. When we got there the water had drained away, but we were still able to take our shoes off and walk knee deep along the boardwalk in this water. It is an amazing place. Jenny Wheeler: Tell us about some of the very unusual insect life they’re finding in those caves. Annie Seaton: My little insect that Emlyn found, my little white thing that stood up with feelers, was totally imaginary. I created that insect. The insects they found, I can’t remember the name now, it starts with ‘C’. I was researching the lady who was there in the 1980s, and they did discover insects they hadn’t found anywhere else apart from the lava tubes that are also in Hawaii and they’re called cave dwelling insects. They’re a special species. Jenny Wheeler: And they adapt to living underground without any light. Annie Seaton: Yes, and sometimes with little air. There are very low levels of oxygen and high levels of carbon dioxide, so it’s very dangerous. That was a fun part of the research too. Jenny Wheeler: One theme with these books is that you like to have strong female characters, don’t you? Writing strong female characters Kakadu Sunset – in the Porter Sisters series eco adventure romance from Annie Seaton Annie Seaton: I do. It’s something I haven’t given actual thought to. It’s not, okay, I’m going to create a character who is a strong female. The women who populate my stories are born like that. They are like that. My very first book back in 2010 was called Winter of the Passion Flower. Quite a few of the reviewers didn’t like my heroine in that because she was so strong. I loved her. That was a steam punk time travel novella. It’s still selling along today. People still buy it and read it. Jenny Wheeler: You have mentioned once or twice about your research. For people who aren’t familiar with your lifestyle, tell us a bit about the way you go about your research. You actually go on the road, don’t you? Annie Seaton: Yes, we do. Most of my books so far, my eco adventure romances – Kakadu, Daintree, Diamond Sky, Whitsunday Dawn and Undara – those five books have been inspired by me seeing a setting. I hadn’t gone there with the intention of creating a book there. They have been somewhere that has hit me as we’ve been there. This year we headed off to Cooktown, right up in the north of Queensland. Because of COVID some of my library talks with Undara were by Zoom which meant some of my international readers could come along. I had a reader from the Lakes District in the UK who was telling me about her husband’s aunt, who again was a botanist up in Cooktown in the 1930s and 40s. Another very strong, fascinating woman, so we deliberately headed off this time to the setting, planning to research it. On the road as sophisticated gray nomads In the way my stories work, it wasn’t right. The setting was lovely, but I discovered that this actual real character’s name was Vera Scarth-Johnson. I actually bought her book of beautiful drawings. She recreated all of them from the botanist on the Endeavor, Captain Cook’s ship. She did a recreation of them. But she is absolutely revered by the community and there is a gallery in the botanical gardens in Cooktown called the Vera Scarth-Johnson Gallery. Once I started doing my research I realized that I could not fictionalize this character. She was too much of a real person and I didn’t think it would go down well, so we went all the way to Cooktown to research a book that’s not going to happen. Usually just the serendipitous – wow, look at this place, smell that air, feel that wind on your skin, look at that landscape. The setting comes that way. Jenny Wheeler: You are particularly sophisticated gray nomads because you camp out and do a little tiki tour while you’re on the road. Annie Seaton: We are. We started off with a tent but we only had that for a week. We went to try it out and when we were in the tent I looked at my husband and he said, come on, we’ll go and buy a camper trailer. Kakadu, Daintree, Diamond Sky and the first Undara research were all done from a camper trailer. Then we upgraded to a caravan that had a shower and toilet and kitchen, then we upgraded to a little bit more off-road caravan that was a bit stronger. Then last year during COVID we upgraded again, so we now have the perfect van for our travels. It can go off road. Looking ahead to the next book Annie Seaton’s Diamond Sky eco-adventure romance The year before last we went out to Alice Springs, and I’m probably preempting one of your questions here. My 2022 book is hopefully going to be called Ruby Gap. That’s what I want to call it, but at the moment the publisher is talking about calling it East of Alice. It is set east of Alice Springs and we took our off-road caravan out there around two years ago and found the most incredible isolated remote locations. I finished writing that book about two weeks ago. Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. We usually round off by talking about what your next project is, so I’d like to get into that when we do. You mentioned an international audience and I have been interested to see that Australian books in general seem to be gaining more and more international attention. I’m thinking about the crime area, because I’ve become aware that there are almost new genres like rural noir and Outback noir being developed by people like Chris Hammer and Garry Disher, both of whom we’ve got on the podcast in coming weeks, but in your area you are also obviously attracting some international interest. Annie Seaton: Yes, it’s interesting. My original publishing journey started with two US digital publishers about 10 years ago. I built up a solid US audience of eBook readers until 2015 when Kakadu Sunset, my first print book with Pam McMillan was published and in the stores. Gradually, from 2015 until about last year, I saw my Australian audience rise because they could see my books in the stores. They were interested in that Outback rural romance, eco adventure. The trend for Australian books to breakthrough internationally But it’s been a very interesting year this year, and I’d like to know what’s causing it and I’m trying to do some research into it. As you know, there is all sorts of software where you can analyze your sales, and for the first time this year, my US sales have now equaled and some weeks my Australian sales are about 47% and my US sales are back to about 53%. I don’t know what’s caused that. If it had been a couple of months later, I could have said, I’m very excited that Whitsunday Dawn is being released in print in the US in December, but it’s a little bit early for that to have been making an impact, because it’s not been released yet. Yes, the US audience is growing. It’s the UK audience I cannot get into. I have some readers in the UK who love my books, but I can’t crack that big time, apart from audio. My audio books are published by Ulverscroft in the UK and sell really well, so they listen to my books. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. Turning away from the specific books to a little bit more about your life. You have only been writing for about the last 10 years or so. What were you doing before that, and how did you make the transition to being a full-time writer? Annie Seaton: I was a high school principal. I used to spend a lot of time writing dry and dusty submissions. I had the gift of language, for all of my life I’ve been an avid reader and I’d always wanted to be an author. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} From small beginnings a full time career has grown I retired young because it just got very, very difficult being the high school principal and I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I thought I would, so I decided to retire. Someone said to me, what are you going to do now? I said, I’ve always wanted to write a book. I wrote my first little Winter of the Passion Flower that made $19 worth of sales with Lyrical Press. Then I picked up a contract with Entangled Publishing and for some reason my book Holiday Affair was a breakout book. I sold 106,000 copies in eBook in the US with my first book. That was a pure contemporary romance. I had another twelve books with Entangled and then I sent an idea and 5,000 words to Pan Macmillan. I was very fortunate in that I got a three-book print deal with Pan Macmillan Australia for Kakadu, Daintree and Diamond Sky with no manuscript written and no agent, which is really surprising. The start of my career was I think I’ll write a book, and here I am 11 years later with 50 books under my belt and Osprey Reef will be the seventh book in the shops. I am in stores in Australia and New Zealand. Paper Plus in New Zealand has my books. I have now tended to go back more to independent publishing. I find I like the control of the marketing and the content of my books, so I’m a bit of a hybrid author, foot in each camp. The secret – to be a marketer as well as an author Annie Seaton’s Daintree Porter sister book Jenny Wheeler: Which is the sweet spot to be for authors, to have it both ways. You also do some coaching and I wanted to ask you, what do you find is the biggest issue or difficulty for young people, or people of any age, who are starting out as a writer. Annie Seaton: These days, with the proliferation of self-publishing, a lot of people go into self-publishing now and think, I’ve written a book, I’ll put it up and sell a lot of copies, and they get very disappointed when they don’t sell a copy. They don’t rank at all. I think the hidden secret is that as well as being an author, you equally have to be a marketer and an advertiser, and not only with independently published books. I have several author friends who are published by our traditional big five print publishers in Australia and are disappointed when they don’t sell many books. You can’t just publish a book and sit back and wait for it to sell. I probably spend two to three to four hours a day marketing, seven days a week, which takes away from writing. I think that’s the biggest key for people starting out. Yes, you have to have a quality product. Yes, it has to be well edited, but you have to sell your book as well. What Annie is reading now Jenny Wheeler: You have to be willing to do that work, don’t you? Somebody used the analogy to me once that it’s a bit like building a house. When you’ve got the walls and the roof on you think you’re just about there, but in fact, you might only be 40% there. It’s a bit like that with a book. You’re hardly even 50% there when you’ve got the product. Annie Seaton: That’s exactly right. With independent publishing it also has to be edited and proofread and formatted and a cover and then uploading. There is a lot of knowledge required to upload to all the various places. I used to upload with Draft2Digital because they’re an aggregator. You would put it up once and they do it for you. But I now independently publish individually to Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Amazon, IngramSpark, and that’s so time-consuming. Jenny Wheeler: Is that because you then have a better chance to market it? Annie Seaton: It’s the marketing but also I got such a shock when I realized how much I had paid to Draft2Digital with their percentage they took over the years. It was in the thousands and I thought, nah, that’s mine. Yes, the marketing as well. IngramSpark print my books, and I sell more print books in the US from my independently published books than I do in Australia, which is interesting. It’s all market, market, market. Jenny Wheeler: Turning to Annie as reader. Because you’re not a newcomer on the show, you know we like to do this. I would like to check in with you and ask you, what are you currently reading and what would you like to recommend to our listeners? Annie Seaton: I have just read the most beautiful book. I love time travel stories. I would love to go back and be able to time travel. In fact, the book that I’m writing now, seeing I’ve finished my next print book, is a fourth time travel book in a series that I’ve written. Recharging batteries after a long working day What The Wind Knows by Amy Harmon – a favorite book of Annie Seaton’s recent reading The book I’ve just read is by Amy Harmon called What the Wind Knows. It was a beautiful book. I stumbled upon it on Amazon one day and I loved it so much I have bought a print copy from Book Depository in the UK. When I discovered it on Amazon I realized it had something like 5-6,000 reviews, so it’s quite a well-known book. Jenny Wheeler: What genre? Annie Seaton: Time travel, dual timeline. What I like to do. Set in the Easter uprising in Ireland and contemporary New York. Jenny Wheeler: How do you recharge your creative batteries? You obviously are one of those A type personalities that goes for it. How do you recharge? Annie Seaton: Absolutely. Up until this year, I haven’t recharged. I’ve just worked, worked, worked. It would be nothing for me, when my husband was still going to work before I retired, to start work at 7.30 in the morning, work through to 5pm, have dinner and network through till 11pm. And do that 5, 6, 7 nights a week. I would really appreciate the occasional author lunch with our author group. That was exciting – to get away not only from the house, but out of the study and away from the desk. More recently, we’ve traveled this year, we had five months away, and I learned how nice it was not to be tied to my desk. We did lots of sightseeing and walking and looking, and I’ve got a couple of inspirations for settings for future books. Talking about the next book, Ruby Gap, out of Alice We have been back a month and I have spent a lot of that time in the study finishing the next HarperCollins book, but I’ve also balanced it with a lot of walking. We walk our dog for an hour or two every day to the beach. We live right on the beach, and I love gardening. When we finish here today, I’ll write my thousand words and then go down to the garden for a couple of hours. Jenny Wheeler: That sounds gorgeous. What is next for Annie the writer? You made that tantalizing mention of a book set near Alice. Talk a little bit about that. Annie Seaton: Ruby Gap is another dual timeline. It is set in the late 1800s and it’s based on a real ruby rush in the late 1800s, a ruby rush and gold rush. Again, that was a serendipitous discovery. We heard of this place Ruby Gap. We were staying at a cattle station out that way. We had to do 60 kilometers on a four-wheel drive track and we came to this huge sandy riverbed that glowed red with the garnets. We fossicked for about 15 minutes and came out with a huge plastic bag full of garnets. I came back and did a lot of research on that and came up with a mystery and a story. My husband, now that he’s retired, read it for me as we traveled. I wrote half of it while we were away and the other half when we got home. He maintains it’s my best story yet, so I’m looking forward to that one going to the publisher next week. A big bag of garnets Jenny Wheeler: What did you do with the big bag of garnets? Annie Seaton: I think they’re in a drawer in the cupboard in the dining room. This trip we also went fossicking out at a place called Ruby Vale in Queensland, and we came home with black sapphires and blue sapphires. I would love to set a book out there. I started thinking about somebody going missing in one of the mines, so always stories. As well as Ruby Gap, which is now finished and off to the publisher, I’ve also got a list of six books that are currently stewing away. I’m writing the fourth time travel in the Love Across Time series. I’m writing a historical called Wellington Rock which is set locally, in our town. It’s always fascinated me. The one my readers are really excited about, and I’ve got lots and lots of pre-orders, is the fifth book in the Porter Sisters series after Kakadu, Daintree, Diamond Sky and Hidden Valley. I’m starting to write that on 1st November. That book is called Larapinta. Jenny Wheeler: Do you write more than one book at the same time? Annie Seaton: Sometimes I write two. People say, how do you do it? I say, it’s just like going to somebody’s house – you know who lives here and what they’re doing and who they are. Then you go to the other house and you meet those people. I’ve also got a couple of novellas I have to write. I’ve got a book coming out on 25th October with a lot of Kiwi authors – Bronwen Evans and Kendra Delugar. There are 11 of us, I think, doing a purely romance box set called Baby, It’s Hot Outside Down Under edition. Where to find Annie online Jenny Wheeler: A few years ago you did a Christmas one, didn’t you? Annie Seaton: Yes, we did. With Rosalind James and Kris Pearson. I love my New Zealand author friends and I love coming over there to the conferences. Hopefully next year, COVID willing, we’ll be able to get back. Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. Where can readers find you online, Annie? Annie Seaton: You can find me at my website, which is very easy to find. It’s www.annieseaton.net, because there was already an Annie Seaton.com. She’s an artist in New York. Instagram, seatonannie. Facebook, Annie Seaton Author. On my website for my New Zealand and Australian readers who prefer to read print, I have a print bookstore. I have discovered a cheap way of posting to New Zealand, and I’m off to the Post Office most weeks posting books to readers in New Zealand, which is lovely. Jenny Wheeler: Very cool. We will have links to those sites you’ve mentioned in the show notes, so that people will be able to find them online for evermore. It has been fabulous talking. All the very best with the future. Annie Seaton: Looking forward to talking again, when you’re up to 300 episodes, Jenny. Jenny Wheeler: Amen to that. What to read next? Some suggestions… If you enjoyed Annie you might like Desire, Revenge & Courage by Kayte Nunn. a WWII dual time line story, or Inspired by Nature, an Australian eco-adventure story by Racheal Treasure LISTEN TO KAYTE NUNN LISTEN TO RACHAEL TREASURE Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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