Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, where I share snippets from new and past releases and works-in-progress, and occasionally invite author buddies along for the ride.

Ooh, you’re lucky things. As if last week’s fun with guest Fiona McArthur wasn’t enough, today we have another guest who might also be offering a giveaway.

But first, news from the Hein house and it’s big. Really big!

Watch your inboxes, my lovelies, because Eddie and the Show Queen is about to go live. Yup, this week I’ll be sending out a newsletter with its cover, blurb and all the linky goodness so you can pre-order this funny, big-hearted read. There’ll also be the chance to pre-order personally signed print copies too, along with the entire first chapter for you to enjoy.

Not part of the newsletter team? Fix that right here.

Done? Excellent. Now to our lovely guest.

Many of you will know Bronwyn Parry from her rural-set, romantic suspense novels like As Darkness Falls, Darkening Skies, Dead Heat, Sunset Shadows and more. Well, Bronwyn has now turned her pen to historical romance. The Clothier’s Daughter released on July 11^th and is already making lots of readers happy, if the gorgeous reviews are anything to go by.

Here’s Bronwyn to tell you a bit more. Make sure you read the whole post, because there could be a giveaway in the offing and we wouldn’t want you to miss out.

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Thanks so much for having me, Cathryn, and hello to all your readers! Some of you may know me already as I’ve written six romantic suspense novels set in New South Wales. However, my new book is a little different. It does have my usual gritty suspense and fast pace, but I’ve let my inner historian loose and The Clothier’s Daughter is set in Yorkshire, in 1816.

It’s been an interesting and enjoyable journey, writing my first historical novel, creating characters and imagining how their lives might have been in a time of huge social and technological change. Emma and Adam came to life in my mind quickly and I loved writing their story—although I did put them through a great deal before their happy ending!

I’ve been fascinated by historic costumes and textiles and other aspects of social history since I was a child, and making Emma the daughter of a clothier, a traditional textile manufacturer, was partly inspired by my Honours degree research on late 18^th century British worsted textiles. I loved spending time in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in the Dales to the north, and discovering the textiles once made in those areas, all spun and woven by hand. These wonderful fabrics were once a huge industry in Britain, exported around the world, but as the Industrial Revolution took hold and made cotton and other machine-made fabrics much cheaper, the traditional fabric industry died out.

There’s nothing like a time of turbulence and change to make a good setting for a book! With her father dead and her brother missing, Emma is trying to keep their family company running, even more of a challenge for a woman in a man’s world of business—especially when someone seems determined to send her to debtors’ prison. The sweet summer of her youth when she’d loved Adam Caldwell and regretfully rejected his proposal seems a lifetime ago.

And now for the teaser! I’ve chosen a scene from the first chapter, where Emma is in the weaving loft on the top floor of the company’s warehouse when a fire breaks out in the stairwell. The ladder only reaches to the office floor below, and she’s trapped in the loft with an unconscious weaver and his (very) young assistant. Adam, riding home after eight years away at war, stops to help at the fire, having scrambled up the ladder to assist the clerks in the office to safety….

The younger clerk was half-way down the ladder when the man at the base shouted, looking up, and Adam twisted to see above the window. Two small legs dangled, one shoe hanging loose, as someone in the loft lowered a child, inch by inch. As the legs came level, Adam grabbed them, guiding the swaying child towards the ladder. A wide strip of fabric wrapped around his chest, tied in a knot almost thicker than the skinny body, long ends of threads hanging. Braithwaite must have cut a web from a loom. Good thinking. Up to thirty yards on a piece of cloth, long enough to reach the ground.

While the boy—young, maybe eight or nine years old—clung to the ladder, Adam tugged the knot loose so the cloth could be used for another person.

“Down you go, lad. You’re safe now.”

The boy’s lip trembled. “Miss Braithwaite and Uncle Jacob—you’ll save them, won’t you?”

His words shattered Adam’s detached focus. “Miss Braithwaite? Miss Braithwaite is up there?” He must have said it forcefully, because the boy barely nodded before he scampered down the ladder.

“Yes, sir,” the clerk behind Adam said. “Miss Emma Braithwaite. She’s the senior partner now, sir.”

Barely hearing anything past the confirmation, Adam leaned half his body out the window, straining to see upwards. “Emma!” The length of fabric obscured his view and he pulled it out of his way. There was no-one at the window. She was somewhere inside there, in the smoke and the fire. “Emma!”

He saw movement, and then her face, almost as pale as the white lace of her collar. She saw him but with the smoke all around she didn’t recognize him, didn’t know him. “I can’t lift Jacob,” she called down to him, to those below, panic sharpening her voice. “I can’t lift him and I won’t be able to hold his weight.”

He closed his fist around the fabric, gripping it tight. “Fasten the cloth to a beam or something heavy. I’m coming up.”

She properly saw him then, visibly startled. “Adam?” She shook her head, urgency overpowering her astonishment. “I can’t. There’s only the loom, and it’s not heavy enough. It just moves.”

Adam swore. He strode across and opened the office door so that he could check the door to the stairs, twenty feet away, near the front wall of the building. The smoke flowed under it, but he could see no flames licking the edge of the door itself. At the other end of the wall, where it met the back wall, the paper curled and smoked, but not near the door.

He returned to the open window and called up again, “Stay near the window, Emma. I’m coming to get you.”

He still wore his great coat, thick wool wet through after hours in the rain. Woollen breeches, leather boots, leather riding gloves. His beaver hat had fallen to the floor when he’d clambered through the window, and he swept it up, jamming it on his head as he pulled his damp cravat up over his face.

The clerk began to follow as he crossed the room. “Sir, you’re not going to…”

“Yes. Get down that ladder, man. Now.”

The metal of the door handle was warm through his gloves, but not searing hot. Not yet. With his ear to the door he held his breath and listened. Over the sound of his heart beats, the harsh crackling of fire eating wood, but not right outside the door. He opened it cautiously, keeping behind it. Smoke rushed in, and noise and heat, but not flames.

Immediately to his left, the stairs rose from the small landing to the upper floor. But there was a hole in the back wall, near the top landing, and the stairs leading to the lower floors were well alight, flames leaping upwards, and thick, choking smoke filled his nose and throat despite the small protection of his loosened cravat. Flames worked on the bannisters, and some of the steps smoked, small pockets of flames breaking through. He could make it. He had to make it.

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Wow. Now that was exciting. Find out what happens next by purchasing your own copy of The Clothier’s Daughter today from these stores:

Amazon.com | Amazon.au | Amazon.uk

iBooks | Kobo

Booktopia | Angus & Robertson | Bookdepository

Righty-o, you saw the hints in the intro, it’s time for a…

GIVEAWAY!

Here’s Bronwyn to tell you the details.

I have a book prize of a free paperback of The Clothier’s Daughter to send to one reader. Simply share in the comments a place and time you’d like to visit if you had a Tardis or other time machine, and we’ll draw the winner from those who have commented.

Oooh, now this is a hard one. So many choices! It’s hard not to want to go into the future but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. What if I discovered something horrible, like… I don’t know, that I died from a shark or crocodile attack or something? Eeek!

But I would dearly love to see dinosaurs in the wild, preferably Australian ones. Or maybe even visit a bit later when giant mammals roamed the land. That would be very cool.

What about you? Share what place and time you’d like to visit and we’ll pop you into the draw to win a copy of The Clothier’s Daughter.

Please Note: Giveaway closes midnight Sunday 28^th July 2019, Australian Eastern Time. Australian postal addresses only.

If you’d like to learn more about Bronwyn and her books, please visit her website. You can also connect via Facebook.

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, where I share snippets from new and past releases and works-in-progress, and am sometime lucky enough to have author buddies do the same.

Life is getting back to normal after the whirlwind that was Fictionally Yours, Melbourne. I can’t tell you what fun I had at that event. It was brilliant! I shared a bunch of photos in a This Writing Life post last Friday. Check it out here, if you missed it.

As I mentioned in our previous Teaser Tuesday, I’ve started work on a new book and it’s going marvellously. I’d love to tell you more but, sorry, you’ll just have to wait. I don’t want to jinx this goodness.

In other suuuuuper important news, Eddie and the Show Queen is one step closer with proof copies finally in production. As soon as they’re checked over and approved it’ll be all systems go. This one’s been a long time coming, but the warm glow of release is now truly in sight. Rah!

Enough of that. We’re hear for a Teaser and today we have an absolute cracker thanks to regular (and special!) guest Fiona McArthur.

You’ll of course remember Fiona from her involvement in the Outback Brides continuity which I was also part of with Elsa’s Stand. But Fiona is also a beloved medical rural romance author, with best-selling titles like Mother’s Day (ebook currently on sale for only $4-99), Red Sand Sunrise, The Homestead Girls, Heart of the Sky and The Baby Doctor. Her latest release – out today, in fact – is The Desert Midwife, and it sounds and looks gorgeous.

Here’s Fiona to tell you more and share a snippet. Make sure you read until the end because there could be a GIVEAWAY!

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Thanks so much for having me, Cathryn, and your readers, because I do love sharing my new books on Tuesday Teaser page with you all.

The Desert Midwife has been such a joy. The story is told in one of my favourite parts of the world, the magical landscape of Central Australia and Uluru and I do have fun sharing with you all my love of the setting.

A view of Uluru from Yalara Resort

Fiona at KataTjuta in central Australia.

And it’s been fun, too, as an amnesia story, I mean – what IF your new lover, almost fiancée, love of your life, man you were besotted with but wondered it was all too good to be true – totally forgot who you were after an accident when you were driving? How would you feel? How would you get him back? And all of this in the middle of Australia in a place he was a stranger to?  It’s a dilemma Ava has to work through while doing the job she loves, caring for the family she knows she’s lucky to have, and all the while she can see Zac wonders if he knew her well – while her heart is breaking.

I do hope you love their journey as much as I do. I’d love to share an excerpt –

Ava. After she’d met Zac on the flight home to Alice Springs…

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…The sunrise tinted a pink swathe across the wall of the room, blushed across the white duvet, and dusted the beginnings of Central Australian heat across Ava’s cheek, warming her skin. Hazily, as she shifted her head, she squinted at the unfamiliar rose-coloured room and frowned.

She could see the flecks of floating dust motes crystallise but, unfortunately, that wasn’t all that formed as clarity returned. Her cheeks burned as the fractured pieces of last night re-emerged and she stifled the urge to groan. Good ghastly grief.

She’d had a one-night stand.

You’re a grown woman. Her inner voice shut down the embarrassment.

That may be, but oh my. Though, she had to admit, she would hate to have grown much older without experiencing last night. Talk about lust at first sight. It had been complete enchantment and they’d been soulmates for at least the length of the spell.

She was no blushing virgin – though her virginity could quite possibly have grown back because it had been more than five years since she’d last been with anyone – for good reason – but darn, this morning felt uncomfortable. Especially when she was a novice at waking up next to a stranger from the night before, with the heat from his body still warming her hip.

She knew the outback rule: never leave your car if you break down. Were there rules for one-night stands?

Her stomach growled and she lifted her hand carefully to cover her eyes. Did this get any more awkward? Maybe she could slip sideways out of the bed. She wasn’t game to turn her head in case he woke up.

‘Would you like coffee?’ Deep, rumbling masculine tones with just a hint of amusement sounded, and she shifted her head to meet his eyes. Yep, those unfairly chocolate eyes were twinkling and not at all abashed.

She sighed and tried not to breathe her dragon breath on him. Another new skill she needed to learn.

Her hand dropped from her face. Right. Toughen up, Ava. ‘Weak black tea would be wonderful. Earl Grey, if you have it. Thank you.’ She wriggled up the pillows, strategically holding the sheet. ‘Then I have to go.’

‘Of course. Would you like a shower while I’m making it? There are extra towels in the bathroom and a bathrobe on the back of the door.’

She thought about a shower, feeling refreshed, more relaxed and restored to her normal unshakable composure, or, alternatively, the messy, crumpled walk of shame without one.

‘That would be great,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I won’t use the robe, though, I’ll just get dressed.’ She could do this. Calm and composure were her middle names; nothing fazed her. Everybody in Alice Springs knew that.

‘Umm . . .’ More amusement sounded in the dulcet tones of his voice, and she turned her head back his way. ‘I think we may have popped a few buttons on both our shirts.’

Her hand came back up and slapped her forehead palm up as the full glory of their lustful exuberance returned.

‘A night to remember,’ she managed in an even tone.

‘I’d like to think so,’ he said. ‘Your Central Australian charisma does fascinate me.’ Then with less amusement he said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Zac Logan – at least she recalled his name – tossed back the sheet, swung his long, muscled, naked body to the edge of the bed and stood. All six foot plus of solid, sexy, sinfully seductive stud. And he didn’t pause to put on any clothes. He just strode to the bench with the kitchen appliances and reached for the switch.

Ava blinked, dragged her eyes from his tantalising backside and scrambled to get to the bathroom before he turned around and gave her a front view…

Ooh-la-la, so sexy! And with The Desert Midwife hitting stores today you won’t have to wait. Trot on down to your favourite book or department store and pick yourself up a copy, or get instant gratification with an ebook (or print) from these online platforms:

Amazon.com | Amazon.au

iBooks | Kobo | Google Play

Booktopia | Angus & Robertson | Bookdepository

Now, as mentioned in the introduction, we have a …

GIVEAWAY!

Yes, my lovelies, Fiona has very generously offered a print copy of The Desert Midwife to giveaway to one lucky reader.

Here’s Fiona to tell you what to do.

I have a book prize of a free copy of The Desert Midwife to send to one reader – if you will share your favourite place in Australia to visit and why.

Got that? Easy-peasy!

Hmm, what’s my favourite place … There are so many wonderful places in this gorgeous country of ours, but I’m going to choose my hometown of Mount Gambier, in the south-east of South Australia. Why? Because it’s where my family lives, it’s loaded with wonderful memories, it’s truly beautiful, and with so many of my rural romances being set in the area visiting fills my creative well.

What about you? Simply share your favourite place in Australia to visit and why and we’ll pop you into the draw to win a copy of The Desert Midwife.

Please Note: Giveaway closes midnight Sunday 21^st July 2019, Australian Eastern Time. Australian postal addresses only.

If you’d like to learn more about Fiona and her books, please visit her website. You can also connect via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using @FiCatchesBabies.