Eerie Weather

A combination of a strong cold front moving north, strong gusty winds and a heavy silt load at Lake Eyre from Queensland's flooding rains earlier this year, have together created one of the countries biggest dust storms.

Hitting Sydney early yesterday morning, it reached here (Brisbane, Queensland) later in the morning. Within 30 minutes we went from blue skies, to a dark eerie glow... car lights needed to be switched on, as did lights within the house.

The air was strong with the scent of red bull dust, evoking memories of when I worked in the outback. Even though I closed the house up, a thick orange layer of dust has still managed to coat everything.

The photos are taken from the same spot on my deck.

12 months on...

It has been one year since I decided to get serious about my writing. I'd lost my day job, and with little chance of finding another that would allow me to work around being a full-time mum, my husband and I agreed this was the time to put my writing first.

To get the ball rolling and just see whether 'published author' was a pie in the sky fantasy, I entered RWA's High 5 competition - for unpublished category writers. Turns out my entry seemed to have a good plot idea, great voice and a lot of potential.

Today I was having a bit of a 'down' day with my writing. So I dug out that entry (a different ms to the one I'm working on now), and reread those 5 pages. What a great pick-me-up to realise maybe my writing isn't as good as it is going to be, but it is certainly better than what it was.

RWA Blog & Book Giveaway

RWA have a blog!

Only recently started, the blog features articles on craft, author interviews, book giveaways, information on Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) and much more.

As a member of the blog team, I'm very proud of how popular the site is becoming. My particular focus is the Blog Bite - a column where RWA members (both published and unpublished) answer 5 questions to reveal a little bit about themselves.

Today the site features a Blog Bite with CC Coburn who is giving away a signed copy of her upcoming release Colorado Christmas. Visit http://romanceaustralia.wordpress.com for your chance to win.

At the moment the 5 questions asked by the Blog Bite are:
1. My worst habit is...
2. It's a bit daggy but I love...
3. My first job was...
4. Three things people might not know about me are...
5. I write...

What do you think of these questions? Should the same questions be asked every time?
Would love some feedback.