Know someone who needs a country style pick-me-up? Give them a rural romance for Christmas! Paperbark Hill, Magpie's Bend, Bottlebrush Creek and Wildflower Ridge are all reader-voted top reads! Find them in your favourite book shop or via the links above.

Five reasons why books make wonderful presents:

🎁 They’re easy to wrap

🎄 They’re reasonably priced

🎁 They offer the recipient hours of entertainment (and possibly many readers thereafter)

🎄 If the recipient is a close friend or family member, they might lend it to you afterwards

🎁 Your book purchases keep Aussie authors in a job!

If your budget doesn’t stretch to buying new books, the next best thing you can do is encourage your book-buying friends/family/colleagues/book clubs to take a chance on a new Aussie author, ask your library to purchase my books or ask your local book store to stock them.

And a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has already given a word-of-mouth recommendation; your support means the world to me!

Final Library Lovers Show

It’s been such a blast hosting this online show for libraries across Australia every month, and boy we’ve had some brilliant guests, not just authors including Jane Harper but magazine editors from Gardening Australia and Australian Country magazine, publishers, podcasters, audiobook producers and of course, library staff from across the country. If you’ve missed these interviews, then head to the YouTube page to watch them at your leisure.

I’d love your company on the final Library Lovers show Wednesday, December 14. Ben Hobson and I will be speaking about Paperbark Hill plus his online book club. We’ll also be chatting with florist Rebecca Noble about her flower farming podcast, Dish The Dirt and festive, floral tips for your home, plus we’ll find out what’s happening at the Mount Gambier library this summer. RSVP HERE for the very last episode of Library Lovers.

I’ve loved doing the show this year and I’m grateful for everyone who’s tuned in, the array of special guests and libraries involved and of course, event sponsors Libby OverDrive, who invited me to be involved in the show and managed behind the scenes each episode.

News from around the property...

We’ve done a big spring clean-up at our little hobby farm, selling our cows, removing as many snake hidey-holes as possible, shearing the lambs and emptying the firewood barrels.  Foxes were on the rampage in October and the local rabbit population is becoming increasingly interested in my garden, so hopefully, these measures help us spot predators earlier. On the plus side, the chooks are laying like crazy, so there are eggs, eggs and more eggs on the menu.

As I write, the rose garden is in full bloom, we have sweet peas, poppies and cosmos gently swaying in the breeze and the dahlia patch is full of greenery. And for anyone who thinks it’s perfect, I promise there’s a plethora of weeds and unhappy plants too! My heart goes out to everyone affected by floods, please contact me if you know someone who’d like seeds to restart their gardens. I have a steady supply of tubers and seeds that I’m happy to share with green thumbs in need!

From my writing desk...

My 2023 novel now has a new name! April and Connor’s story is officially called Kookaburra Cottage (previously the working title was A Place in the Vines). I’m currently in the middle of the copy edits and will send it back to my publisher mid-December. By the time the next newsletter comes out, I’ll have a cover to show you and a proper synopsis, so you’ll know all about April’s family winery, our piano-playing lead man Connor and the new cast of characters in the South Australian setting. Kookaburra Cottage will be published in June and will be available for pre-order soon. As you can see above, I've been busy photographing vineyards to hopefully again assist with the cover photo!

You might remember from previous newsletters that Kookaburra Cottage was a particularly troublesome manuscript, with the plot going in every which direction as I wrote, requiring a mammoth round of rewriting in August and September. Because of this, I decided to approach the 2024 manuscript from a slightly different angle. Instead of diving into writing the moment I could, I spent much of October and November researching my new characters (Lauren and Jack) and outlining their story from top to bottom.

You see, when it comes to writing, authors are usually plotters or ‘pantsers’, in that they fly by the seat of their pants and make up the story as they go along. When I started writing fiction, I was a devoted plotter. I stepped a little further away from this habit with each published book, but after this winter’s gruelling edits and on the advice of the fabulous Jane Harper, I’ve returned to plotting and I’m loving it. I now have a 7000-word outline for the 2024 novel and once the copy edits for Kookaburra Cottage are done, I’ll start the first draft with a solid idea of what happens in the new book.

On the family front, we’re all excited for the new year ahead. My husband spent much of 2021 and 2022 training and studying and is now a qualified ag pilot. His work regularly takes him interstate, and although I cringe thinking about the trees he dodges mid-air and the powerlines he flies underneath to spray the crops, I’m so proud to see him chasing his dreams too.

My two eldest children have enjoyed extra-curricular leadership roles this year, requiring regular – and unexpectedly fun - road trips to Melbourne. Car karaoke, audiobooks and novel brainstorming sessions have become a highlight of these eight hours drives. And the youngest knocked our socks off by being longlisted in a national writing competition. Her short story was published in an anthology, which was presented at the school assembly, much to her delight. That’s now four generations of published Linnell’s in the family!

Summer author spotlight & flash giveaway

I have two wonderful books to give away this newsletter. Julietta Henderson’s Sincerely, Me is an enormous hug of a book that will tickle your tear ducts and your funny bone. The scruffy and wayward hero, Danny Mulberry, lives in a garden shed at the bottom of his best mate’s garden, but when his drunken escapades are splashed across the front page of the local paper, his life takes quite the unexpected turn.

Read my interview with Julietta HERE. You can also win a copy of Emelia Jackson’s beautiful cookbook First, Cream the Butter and Sugar. I’ve made so many fab things from this book, and the biggest showstopper was the famous cookie cake below, filled with lemon curd and a cheesecake-esque filling. Head to my WIN page to enter both, but get in quick as the contest closes Monday (December 5).

What's cooking, good looking?

In the kitchen, I’ve been baking prolifically from the following three books.

The Food Savers A-Z is a brilliant resource if you have a glut of fruit, a bunch of limp vegetables you can’t bear to throw away or a random pantry ingredient past its prime. I’ve made so many things including a creamy avocado-based salad dressing, fizzy rhubarb drink to utilise our vigorous rhubarb patch (which reminds me of making ginger beer in the 90s) and the gloriously simple Amigthalota (the delicious Greek almond biscuits you find in fancy jars by the register at swanky cafés). These biscuits solved my perpetual dilemma of ‘what can I do with egg whites after using the yolks for lemon curd and custard?’. They are a delicate and less sugary option than pavlovas (find the recipe here).

It was a pleasure interviewing broadcaster, cook and author Alice Zaslavsky about her new release The Joy Of Better Cooking for Library Lovers, I’ve made half a dozen recipes already, including the lemon poppy seed cake below (find the recipe here).

I’ve also upped my sweets game after receiving the glorious new book by Masterchef finalist Emelia Jackson AND I have a copy of First, Cream the Butter and Sugar, for one of you lucky bakers. To enter, remember the name of the recipe I’ve shared next. It’s a homemade custard, which has the bonus of utilising all these fresh eggs (using THIS recipe for crème patissiere). Thanks to Murdoch Books for sending me so many cookbooks to road-test this year and letting me share these three recipes in this newsletter.

And if you're after some of my favourite Christmas recipes, there's a bunch of my favourites in my December 2021 newsletter too.

Authors supporting authors

This year I had the pleasure of interviewing 36 fabulous authors at library and bookshop events, podcast takeovers, live online shows and written blog interviews. So far, I’ve also read 55 novels and given away over a dozen books to lucky readers through this wonderful newsletter community and at in-person events.

As well as spreading the word about great books, talented writers, passionate booksellers and invaluable library staff, I was also lucky to have a steady run of events and interviews for my 2022 novel Paperbark Hill, including a magazine shoot for Australian Country Magazine.

On a local level, my daughters and I were pleased to help with the local library’s website revamp (you might spot our photos on their fancy new website) and I had the very important (and quite nerve-wracking) job judging the local primary school’s Book Week costume competition. I think the book week judging gig was almost harder than the live cross I did with ABC Radio from Rottnest Island to promote the Romance Writers Australia conference!

Upcoming events

I’m delighted to be a special guest at the Campaspe Library’s International Women’s Day event in Echuca on Sunday March 5, alongside historical author Caroline Beecham. I’ll also give a writing workshop for the Kyabram Town Hall Writers Group on Saturday March 4, please contact the Echuca Library if you’d like to attend.

And if you’re a south west Victorian, you can catch me at the Port Fairy Folk Festival on March 13. Jim Haynes and I will be involved in the writers program, so come and say hi if you’re attending!

Don’t forget, you can also catch me online Wednesday December 14 for the last Library Lovers show. RSVP here for this FREE show.

That’s it for me this year. Stay well, friends! Wishing you and your family a safe and warm summer break, and festive well wishes from our home to yours. Love, Maya

Until next time...