Romantic Book Of The Year FINALIST 2009

Monday, June 15th, 2009

I’m absolutely thrilled! THE MIDWIFE’S BABY has finalled in the Short Sweet category of the prestigious Romantic Book Of The Year, R*BY, awards held at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference in Brisbane in August. This book came out last year in Australia and was a lot of fun to write. I’ve been attending RWAustralia conferences since they were first held eighteen years ago (that would be why a big birthday is coming up for me) and have watched with awe as finalists each year have produced such wonderful books.

To think that the reader judges have included me in this elite makes me very grateful for all the help and support I’ve received from Romance Writers of Australia over the years.

I can’t recommend joining the organisation more highly if you are an aspiring or published author.

Congratulations to the other finalists and I look forward to a fabulous night with my writer friends and my family around me.

As promised, I’ve included an extra Kimberley photo and the first of my two Kimberley books now has a title, MIDWIFE IN A MILLION and is due for release early 2010.

I’m deep into the next book set in the Kimberley region, and I’m loving this book. In the north of Western Australia, helicopter crashed, a midwife walking away from a pregnant woman, hoping she doesn’t birth before she can get to help… and the hero to die for

sigh

its a hard life living these dreams. I don’t think so.

xx Fi

PS I’m off to see Simon and Garfunkle in Brisbane with a dear friend on Thursday. More on that later

keep well and happy

warmest regards

xx Fiona

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The Last Minute Guide To Birth
Coming out in September 2010 from Penguin Australia, to help those last minute nerves and questions. New cover coming soon.

I’m very excited about my first Non-Fiction book, THE LAST MINUTE GUIDE TO BIRTH.

A midwife for twenty five years, I’ve always been passionate about sharing the insights I’ve gained about birth with women and their families.

When a mother-to-be walks into an antenatal class she has some questions she wants to ask first. One of them is “How will I know if I’m in labour?”and there’s heaps of answers after that. This book starts there. If you want an easy to read, last minute guide to those burning questions, I can’t wait to share.

wishing you a wonderful birth

Fiona
Midwife in a Million
To save a baby -Their gruelling race against time across the rugged Outback to save a patient’s unborn child challenges Kate and Rory physically and emotionally –

Available Feb – UK and NA, March, Australia

Why I wrote the book,

I loved the scenery in Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Australia’. I watched the movie and wondered why I’d never made it to the Kimberleys of Western Australia—apart from the fact it’s nearly two and a half thousand miles from my house. When the opportunity arose to attend a midwifery conference in Darwin that was enough serendipity for me to make the leap.

So followed a glorious week in the top end of Australia driving in an all-terrain vehicle across rock-strewn rivers, past magnificent escarpments and into the purple sunsets of the Kimberleys. Such fabulous land and fabulous people—that’s where Rory and Kate from ‘Midwife in a Million’ grew up.

Rory had always been Kate’s hero, the one who’d stood up for her in school, the only person who knew the real Kate—not the Outback royalty one. He was there for Kate at her most desperate times…except for the one time she didn’t tell him she needed him. And for the past ten years that secret was enough to destroy what they’d had.

In this book, Kate needs to transfer a young pregnant woman to Perth, through floods and storms and terrible roads, and it’s Rory who arrives to help. This is their journey. I hope you grow to love Kate and Rory as much as I did. They epitomize the strength, determination and humor of the people who live “top end.” I hope, too, that within the following pages you can glimpse the incredible beauty of the Kimberleys that thrilled me.

I wish you happy reading!

Fiona McArthur

Midwife in a Million

by Fiona McArthur

Ten years ago paramedic Rory McIver left home, promising childhood sweetheart Kate Onslow he’d return to make her his bride. But Kate abruptly called off their engagement, and Rory, devastated, stayed away. Now he’s back to ask the woman who broke his heart one simple question—why?

When a medical emergency forces them together, the passion between the old flames reignites! Their grueling race against time across the rugged Outback to save a patient’s unborn child challenges Kate and Rory physically and emotionally. Now is the time for them to confront their past—their future together depends upon it!

EXCERPT

Rory McIver stepped thankfully from the RFDS aircraft he’d hitched a ride with. It hadn’t been one of the smoothest flights he’d ever been on. Maybe he should have driven from Perth but it had been such a hectic couple of weeks that the idea of driving three thousand kilometres on a whim didn’t do it for him.

He bent to scoop a little of the red earth he’d watched pass below his window for hours, let it run through his fingers, then allowed the wind to blow the soil from his palm. He looked around. He never thought he’d return.

Even early in the morning on the airstrip the hot wind wrapped around him like an electric blanket on high, that all enveloping heat that only Western Australia’s Kimberley could offer, a heat he hadn’t felt for ten years and savoured now.

He touched his shirt pocket and gripped the bulkiness of his wallet in that habit he’d acquired since she’d sent the damn letter all that time ago. Enough!

As the plane bumped away on the dirt strip a cattle dog barked and the dog’s lanky owner tipped his finger under his hat in greeting. ‘G’day, Rory. Long time, no see.’

Here was a person who hadn’t changed. ‘Smiley.’ Rory nodded to the cowboy leaning against the battered truck. ‘Good of you to meet me.’ They shook hands and Rory threw his swag in the back where a cloud of red soil smothered it as it landed. He smiled wryly and opened the passenger door against the wind. When the spinning top of a whirly wind tried to climb in with him he wondered about the implications of the strong breeze.

Smiley pushed himself off the truck and slid behind the wheel to start the engine. ‘I wondered how long it would take you after Kate turned up,’ Smiley drawled in that remembered way and drew a smile from Rory until the words sank in.

Rory grimaced. Well, apparently not long. ‘I read in the newspaper that her father’s sick. So she’s been gone a long time, too?’

‘Hmm. Left the same year as you. Went to school in Perth.’ Smiley grunted and let off the handbrake. ‘She’s back to spend time with him but flies down to the station township a few days a week to relieve Sophie.’

Smiley glanced at a small four-wheel drive vehicle under a lean-to in the corner of the paddock and Rory gathered it was Kate’s. ‘She works at the clinic, and delivers the babies that drop in from the camps, as well as emergencies.’ Smiley shook his head. ‘I hear the old man isn’t happy she’s working here at all.’

Seems Lyle Onslow hadn’t changed then. Malignant old sod.

‘Her father was never happy.’

‘He’s dying.’ Smiley turned to look at him and they both thought about that. Lyle was a hard man, and not always fair, but no doubt Saint Peter would sort that one out shortly.

Smiley shrugged the old man’s problems away and slipped another matchstick into his mouth to chew. His lips barely moved but the matchstick danced at the edge of his lips in a skill passed down from Smiley’s father. It brought back the good memories for Rory and there’d been many of those.

‘So you told her you’re coming?’ Smiley said around the match.

No, Rory thought. He closed his eyes and the sleepless night he’d spent trying to work out how to do that hung heavily behind his lids. ‘Try and keep a damper on that news, mate, until I get a chance.’

Smiley snorted, the closest he came to a laugh. ‘Keep a damper on it? Here?’ Smiley took the match-stick out and pointed it at Rory. ‘The airwaves’ve been hummin’ since your plane left Perth.’

Rory supposed he’d known that—just blocked it out—and he’d have to deal with the fact that he’d broken his promise when he saw her.

When he saw her. He didn’t know how he felt about seeing the woman who’d dumped him after promising to wait. Had never answered his letters. Had apparently been the cause of heartbreak and suffering for his parents, who had shown her nothing but kindness when her mother died.

He needed more time, or would there never be enough time between them? Now he’d almost achieved his life’s goal he’d finally realised he couldn’t move on until he’d settled the past.

‘How’s Sophie?’

Smiley’s sister was the antithesis of her brother. Bubbly and extrovert, she bossed Smiley mercilessly and her dour brother just shrugged. There’d been a time the four of them had done everything together out on the sprawling million acres of Jabiru Station— another thing Kate’s father hadn’t liked, his daughter knocking about with the hired help.

‘Nagging as usual,’ Smiley said but there was pride in his voice and he elaborated, unusual for him, as if he sensed Rory’s need for a change of subject. ‘Now she’s working at the clinic with…’ He shot him a quick glance.

… with Kate, Rory completed in his mind.

‘Anyway, having help means Sophie gets some time off for a change,’ Smiley went on. ‘So she’s good. She’s getting tips on baby-catching, she calls it, and thinkin’ of doing her midwifery.’ He looked back at the road. ‘When do you go back?’

Kate the teacher for Sophie? Of course she’d changed. What did he expect? That she’d still think he, Rory, held the answers to the universe?

‘I’ve a week off. I’ll stay over at the Hilton until RFDS can pick me up in a couple of days.’

The Hilton was the town’s tongue-in-cheek name for the extremely run down boarding house presided over by a tough ex-army nurse, Betty Shultz. Shultzie swore she’d never leave Jabiru Township, then again, Shultzie swore, loudly and often, all the time.

Her Hilton was nothing like the chain of exclusive hotels of the same name; her establishment was bare minimum and held together by pieces of wood nailed over the top of other pieces of wood.

‘How was Charlie’s retirement party?’

‘Good food,’ Smiley said. ‘Don’t suppose you’d want his job?’

After flogging himself to higher and higher levels until last month’s appointment? Volunteer ambulance in the bush instead of Deputy Commissioner of the entire state? Actually, it held some attraction. Back on the road instead of budget meetings and troubleshooting.

‘No. Afraid not.’

They didn’t speak again until they drove past the huge cattle yards on the outskirts and pulled up opposite the rundown hotel in the main street of Jabiru Township, population a hundred and fifty through the week, three hundred—mostly ringers and cowboys—on the weekend. Town, sweet town.

He looked around. A big change from Perth city.

Another whirly wind scooted past Rory as he lifted his swag out of the back and he glanced at the pale sky for the first streaks of cloud. Not yet.

He thumped the roof and Smiley lifted his hand and drove away. Rory watched the truck until it disappeared in a ball of dust and wondered if he could change his mind and ride it back out to the airstrip.

He’d never run from a challenge before. Funny how attractive that thought was right now, but only for a moment.

Well, he’d arrived. He needed to stop making such a big deal of a visit home. It wasn’t as if he had family here any more. He squashed that bitterness away too. The rest—meaning his reaction to Kate— would have to take care of itself.

He looked at the mostly boarded shops in the deserted street. It wasn’t like Kate’s father’s homestead and the home station where he’d grown up, but in the years since he’d been to the commercial part of Jabiru not much had changed.

Except the collateral damage he’d caused to his family by his liaison with Kate.

Kate Onslow was born into the pilot’s seat of an aeroplane; luckily, because it made the distance she needed to cover so ridiculously easy.

The two-hour drive between Jabiru Homestead and Jabiru Township was dust all the way and to fly cut the distance down to twenty minutes. Her greatgrandfather had settled on the station a hundred years ago and when the township had grown exponentially her grandfather had built a new homestead away from the madding crowds. Though a hundred people didn’t seem ‘madding’ to Kate, she could understand the improvement in position for the family headquarters.

The new Jabiru Homestead, many-gabled, encircled by verandas and sprawled over an acre, nestled below a range of ochre mountains that bordered the Timor Sea; the peaks gave water and provided glorious waterholes and a lush rainforest pocket, and all only a short distance from the sparseness around the house.

The old homestead at Jabiru Township that she could see in the distance now from the air, held the hospital clinic, the pharmacy, the one-roomed library of donated books and the garage for the town’s only four-wheel drive ambulance truck.

As she closed in on her destination Kate saw the Royal Flying Doctor plane take off from the town strip and her heart rate dropped in a swoop as if she’d flown through a sudden wind shift, something her aircraft had been doing all flight, but this internal up-draught made her sick to the stomach.

She’d had three radio calls already to tell her Rory McIver was coming to town to see her.

Last month it had been hard enough to come back and face her belligerent father and the reality of his illness but that paled in comparison with Rory’s unexpected visit.

She’d been able to face the idea of coming home because she’d known her father would never change her mind about anything again. But Rory? Once he’d been the world to her.

She would just have to survive this too. Her independence would help her survive it. The sudden sting of threatening tears she ignored—they never came to anything. She hadn’t cried since all that had happened ten years ago and the lies. But the emotional turbulence had started and she hadn’t even seen him. She was a big girl now and not some needy teenager with an adolescent crush on the manager’s son.

Kate took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Too many years she’d spent telling herself she needed to stand on her own, rely on herself, be strong, and that determination would not be undermined by a man who had been out of her life for a long time. What did he want to see her for now, anyway?

Kate stripped Rory’s intrusion from her mind and concentrated on her descent because that was her strength. Single-minded concentration on what needed to be done. But, as soon as the plane grounded, as soon as room for distraction arrived, the thoughts returned to stick like the plane’s wheels to the ruts on the strip.

She gritted her teeth and secured her aircraft but the worry nagged at her all the way to town in her vehicle. Nagged her through the first half hour at work, right up until sixteen-year-old Lucy Bolton presented with the worst case of indigestion she’d had in her life.

Jabiru Township Clinic serviced the small town set in the baked earth at the edge of the station’s southern mountain ranges, a place that hid lush waterholes and settlements, plus far-flung aboriginal communities and out camps for the station. If the situation was dire, the doctor might be able to fly in once a week—unfortunately he’d been in yesterday.

Kate took one look at Lucy and put her to bed in the four bed ward. ‘Under those covers, young lady. No arguments. Where’s your mother?’

Lucy was a big-boned, hardworking girl whose mother leased one of the four pubs in town from Kate’s father. Usually happy-go-lucky and fun, Kate knew Lucy wasn’t one to complain. They bred them tough out here—had to—it was a long way to twentieth century medicine.

‘Mum’s tired.’ Lucy sat gingerly on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes. ‘There was a big outfit in town yesterday and I didn’t want to wake her.’ Lucy sighed as she rested her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. ‘The queer thing is, Kate,’ she whispered, ‘I haven’t eaten a thing ’cause I feel so rotten, so how can I have indigestion?’

‘That’s not good.’ Kate stared down at the young girl and in a swirl of memories saw herself. ‘Poor you.’ She stroked her hair. She saw the slight puffi-ness around the eyes, the tiredness, that protective maternal hand that crept over her stomach. Her voice dropped. ‘Any chance you’re pregnant, Luce?’

Lucy’s eyes flew open and the sudden fear in the young girl’s face was enough confirmation. Kate sighed under her breath for the loss of youth coming Lucy’s way and a smidgen for the prick of envy. She wished she’d had the sense to ask for help like Lucy had.

Though in Kate’s day Mrs Schulz mightn’t have been as easy to approach as Kate or Sophie would be, even if Kate had been able to get all the way to the township from the home station.

She stroked Lucy’s shoulder. ‘Everything will be fine. I’ll just take your blood pressure, poppet. You don’t look well to me either.’

By the time Kate had done a full physical assessment the window shutters were banging against the walls outside and the howl of the wind was clearly audible. Kate barely noticed it as her concern grew for the young woman in front of her.

The flying doctor would have to come back and pick her up because there was no way she could manage Lucy here. And there was no way she wanted to because she knew what it could cost.

Fiona McArthur

Romantic Book Of The Year FINALIST 2009

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by Fiona McArthur