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Hello! 

Thank you for dropping by my home and heart on the web. I have been updating my blog and website and hope you like what we have done with the page. You can leave feedback on the contact page.

My first novel was published back in 1993. Some wonderful things happened in my life before then, but even more exciting moments have come my way since holding that first book with my name on the cover in my trembling hands and with tears of joy trickling down my face.

 It has been a long journey since I first started my writing. There have been days when it was sheer hard work and learning the craft of writing novels, days of delight and days of tears. These have all balanced out when my characters' come alive in my heart and mind so the words simply fly onto the pages. I do enjoy sharing what I have learnt (sometimes the hard way) about writing with other writers and readers during speaking appointments and writing workshops.

Perhaps I'll meet you someday at a book-signing or speaking appointment?

Mary

Another Blog update at last.

                  Sincere apologies for not updating  here for so long. 

So, programmes like Blogspot and Google change. My problem of being able to create updates has been very frustrating - and too time-consuming. Once again, despite hours trying to work out email addresses and passwords to create this "New Post" had to get help from a fellow writer, Paula Roe. Paula created my website and once again has been wonderful. She spent a lot of her own precious time this morning helping me so that here I am again at long last.

THANK YOU, PAULA ROE  Do check out her website by clicking on her name. 

The days have been so busy, it is hard to believe it is now almost 12 months since publishing my last post. Last year was a great year filled with visits from family and friends - some not seen for far too long.   Afraid it did become so busy with other commitments, it left little time to even think about posting here on my blog - especially when it took so long just finding the "New Post" so could publish one.

Earlier in 2015 there were a lot of trips from our beautiful Beauty Point to Launceston health specialists for Ray and dental appointments for myself. We are thankful all is under control now. Although slowing down of course, taking longer to do things and sometimes the memory not as sharp, my husband and I are very grateful to have the health we do at this time of our lives. 

The busy year did interfere with our writing schedules. At last Ray's new book, the seventh in his themed 31 Day Devotional series has just been published and will soon be on the bookshelves.  

My two manuscripts, Her Outback Cowboy and Delayed Dreams (A follow-on from my 1994 Damaged Dreams with Barbour Publishing) are still needing final revisions.  It has been exciting to see Damaged Dreams and all my back list from Barbour now out again as e-books. The plan is still to have eight more of my back list also available as e-books.

When possible, I still enjoy sharing with other writers online, but especially face to face at Conferences and writer events. 

At a special monthly SWWT meeting a few years ago.

 I am still very involved with activities of the Society Women Writers Tasmania. This year we are hosting the national society's Alice Award Event in August. 

AND NOW, 2016?

 Poatina Faith and the Arts with writers

It commenced in January with me at the Poatina Faith and Arts week. It was a privilege to again host the Creative Writing elective. It was the fore-runner of what is already looking like another very busy year. 

Ray and I at long last are going on our Indian Pacific Train trip to Perth. We have a book-signing there at Mt Lawley Koorong bookshop on April 30^th and other speaking and meeting appointments are being scheduled in April and May. In June we are taking our car to the mainland for our next trip. Besides seeing friends and family, we have accepted an invitation to the three day Christian High Schools Writing Retreat at Tahlee in NSW. We are looking forward to this but know it will be a challenge to share with keen young writers some of the things learnt over the years about writing,

It has thrilled me to see books now published by authors I have shared with over the years at conferences, workshops and mentoring programmes. Perhaps more of that in future blog posts. 

Dreaming about my next book.

   This book was my second Heartsong Presents inspirational romance novel published by Barbour Publishing in America. As well as my Search and Great Southland series, I am so thrilled they released it again last year as an e-book. This is the cover of the e-book available on Amazon and other sites like Barnes and Noble, Australia's Koorong and Word Australia bookshops.
   After writing my other Heartsongs and a requested novella for Barbour's Christmas Dreams volume, I decided to write a spin-off for Damaged Dreams. By that time my husband, Ray, was ministering at a church in Northampton, north of London. That is where we were living when I wrote the first draft of the manuscript, Delayed Dreams. Naturally this new book had to be set mainly in beautiful England. Unfortunately, by that time, it was decided by my editor there had been too long a period since the first book had been published.

Now that this book is again available as an e-book, I have been working again on revising the  original Delayed Dreams manuscript. It has been a very busy time here the last few months, and I am delighted that at long last I have submitted it to a publisher today. Of course, the hero and heroine were young minor characters who were very good friends in Damaged Dreams.

Would love to have comments from anyone who has already read Damaged Dreams. If you haven't read the paperback, do download that e-book version!

Can you tell me the names of the hero and heroine in Damaged Dreams?
Who do you think are the characters from that first book who now have their own romance story told?

And I hope you are all celebrating a very wonderful Easter season, as we remember the greatest Book ever written of the story of God's love for us in His Son, Jesus Christ

Check out my updated website: http://www.mary-hawkins.com
Don't forget my Facebook site.

Reliving Memories

Life always throws ups and downs at us. Ray and I have been having quite a few of them these last couple of years. Although we have both had some relatively minor health issues, we are still active but do realise we seem to be doing less and getting weary faster. Sound familiar anyone?

We had a wonderful few weeks again over Christmas and New Year with our family and friends.

This year we added our celebrations of reaching the mile-stone of being married for fifty marvellous, happy years..

We can only give thanks to our wonderful Lord for all His has done for us over all these years.


Seeing the DVD of our old wedding photos and singing a couple of the songs we chose for our wedding day brought back beautiful memories.

Fifty years is a long time and there had to be that touch of loss also as we saw images of some dear family and friends who are no longer with us. There are some of these folk in this photo I just have to share here of course.

We accept sorrow because God does comfort and bring back joy. Although our faces now may show the ups and downs of the years, this shows only a little of the great joy we have been given over all these years in our marriage.

Here is another photo to show our family now. God is still bringing us great happiness through our children as we watch their faithful walks with him. In the years to come may it also be true for each of our precious grandchildren.

PART TWO - MY JOURNEY LAST OCTOBER

Do hope you have read Part One before this where I shared a little of our time in Melbourne, with friends at Orange and Tamworth in New South Wales. The main focus of our time on the Australian mainland was the Omega Writers’ CALEB conference in Brisbane, Queensland.

Our home until I was nine on
the black soil plains of the Darling Downs.

However, our next appointments after Tamworth were near and in Dalby on the Darling Downs, over 200 kilometres west of Brisbane. This was the black soil pains area where I grew up and still have extended family on several large farms.  On our old farm on the eastern Downs near Bongeen (the setting of my Search book series now e-books), Dad grew mainly grain crops like wheat, barley and sorghum.  The landscape has changed tremendously, especially with large numbers of much larger dams for irrigating cotton and a variety of other seasonal crops.

 

Bruce organised our time at Dalby

We were booked to stay several days with my brother Stan Pedler on a farm some distance from Dalby. The minister at the church in Dalby was an old friend of ours and a great organiser of a dinner where we spoke and Ray preached at their church the next day. 
It was our first experience doing a book-signing for a general market bookshop. Collins Bookshop was in a large shopping complex and a great experience.

I also enjoyed very much meeting old friends and family, some who live in Dalby and others out on farms I remember visiting many years ago with my own family.



As I mentioned in the last blog post, we were concerned about the “sore” on Ray’s face. The day we arrived at Stan’s, my brother mentioned he had a very painful knee. He lived close to an hour’s drive from Dalby so made an appointment to see his doctor while we were at the book-signing. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so while I stayed with our books for a brief while, Ray went with Stan hoping to be able to also see a doctor at the clinic. I have no doubt God was organising us even more than our friend could have control of. 



My big brother, Stan.

Stan’s doctor took one look and booked Ray in to have it cut out in the surgery the next afternoon. Only later did we discover he was concerned enough to give up his day off to do that. Family and friends have told us this doctor Ray “happened” to see is very highly thought of in the area as the doctor with a great deal of experience at the local Skin Cancer Clinic. Yes, it was a Squamous Cell Carcinoma - still nasty but not as vicious as a melanoma. So for nearly a fortnight during the conference and speaking appointments, Ray had that dressing on his face. 

Oh, need I mention the pain in Stan’s knee also stopped quickly over the next few days? God is good and His mercies endure forever. 

Ruth Bonetti, Anne Hamilton
 and Jo Wanmer

 

We could only spend a brief few hours with family and friends in my home town of Toowoomba on the way to Brisbane and the wonderful CALEB writers’ conference.

Hard working CALEB members who worked hard organising our conference our great conference.

 

 

The Omega Writers organise the Award dinner and fiction finalists wait to be told the dinner.

The few days were a wonderful time of fellowship with other writers. This input to my writing was something I regret very much not having for over ten years in those early days of
trying to write that first book, Search for Tomorrow.

 


The writers in the master class I  presented doing an exercise about point of view and dialogue - while I had a break from speaking.


    

The publisher of Wombat/Even Before Publishing with most of her published authors - except my husband, Ray, who had sneaked off too soon after the dinner.

I am so thrilled and proud of our Aussie writers. May we all continue to try and improve our efforts to give readers more challenging and entertaining books. I am only sorry my camera was not working properly so could have more photos.

 

Currently I am trying very hard to get to what I hope wil be the final revisions for my new single title, Her Outback Cowboy.

When I do get time, afraid I am too slow preparing my blog posts and now Christmas Day has come and gone as I type this on Boxing Day. I do hope all reading this have had a great time yesterday and a restful time today. May you know personally the true wonder of how God has shown His love for us by giving us His only Son.

 

I am afraid I did not think to get my camera out yesterday when at Craig and Rachelle's for our Christmas time together. Those six grandchildren had a wonderful time today with their presents. I stayed with them for a few hours while Mum and Dad - and Grandad too - had to work at Seahorse World and Seahorse Australia breeding farm. Like all farms, the animals - and fish! - still have to be cared for on holidays. 

 

And now the rest of our trip - already over too long ago - has to wait until I have time to prepare PART THREE - especially some more photos I hope you might enjoy.

Would love anyone who is in the above photos to let me know in a comment. 

 

I also have a post last Monday and the next two on some of the basics of writing Christian Romance - Click on this:- Australasian Christian Writers 

 

MY JOURNEY SINCE LAST AUGUST (Part One)

I wonder how many times over the years I’ve said something like, ‘Where has all the time gone?’ The older I get the faster ‘time’ rushes by. I just checked back and to my horror realised it is nearly four months since I posted a blog here that was not a review of a fellow author’s book.

So much has happened since then I hardly know where to start. Last August here, I renewed some old memories of the wonderful American Christian Fiction Writers conference Ray and I were so privileged to share. Some of my Aussie writer friends were off to this year’s conference so I had to get out some of my old photos. Since then I have tried to keep my Facebook friends up to date on some of my journey. Today am sharing more, including photographs I hope tell more of our time with family, old friends and making new friendships. As always though, we did miss taking photos of some events.

It was a busy time over several months organising our six week trip on the mainland for September and October. Thankfully at the very beginning of our travels neither of us were sea-sick this time on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry to Melbourne. We drove up to Queensland from Melbourne through the inland, back home down the coast from Brisbane to Sydney and then inland again back to Melbourne. By the time we arrived home to our lovely Tasmania, we had travelled 5,124 kilometres and did take some time of course to recover!

First stop Melbourne and a much needed rest with our daughter who took us to the beautiful Rhododendron gardens in the Dandenong mountains:

 

 

 Then we drove through Victoria, stopping at Christian bookshops in towns on the way up to Central West New South Wales to Orange. We once lived in this beautiful city where two of our children were born and where we commenced a new church. Couldn't resist taking a photo of this house. This was the old church manse we lived in and where the first meetings of the church began way back in 1968.

 

 

During those years I was on the committee which commenced the first Christian bookshop in Orange. It was a wonderful privilege to do a book-signing in the shop now known as Pilgrim Christian bookshop.

We stayed with the current minister and his wife, lovely John and Patricia Shuttleworth. 
Ray preached at their Sunday service where we were delighted how many folk filled the chapel and how many bought our books too of course. It was a great time renewing friendship with some old friends still there as well as seeing how God has blessed and grown the ministry of the fellowship we helped commence. We had a lovely evening with the Abel family. My, how the numbers there have grown oven these many years.

 

 

 

Out next overnight stop was Tamworth where we renewed memories again with special friends we had known in Maitland in the Hunter Valley. Merrilyn and Glenn Rose.

 

 

 

Our friends organised a meeting for us. Again wonderful to meet old friends not seen for too many years. I roped Ray in at this meeting to share also about how he had at last given in to his wife's nagging - oops, encouragement of course! - to write devotional books. As well as his first self-published 'Neurotic Rooster', Ray now has four of his themed 31 Day Devotional Book series published by Wombat Books in their Even Before Publishing division. 'Dynamic Ageing' is scheduled for release this coming February and his 'Signpost To Happiness' in May. 


It was in Tamworth we became concerned about
a lesion on Ray's face that was getting worse instead of better from his Tasmanian doctor's treatment.

It is so wonderful to look back and see how God was in control of our scheduling on this trip. That lesion turned out to need urgent treatment....

But that will have to be told in my next blog post:-

                         MY JOURNEY SINCE LAST AUGUST - PART TWO  



BLOG TOUR: A New Resolution

 



Rose Dee's books just keep getting better and better. Don't miss her Resolution trilogy and this book tour.

Do scroll right to end of blog to see the giveaway and how to enter. Fabulous prizes.

 

 

2 - 6 December 2013

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is Introducing

A New Resolution

( Even Before Publishers Oct 2012)

By Rose Dee

About the Book:

Resolution Island is a safe haven for Anika Demeur - a chance to fulfil dreams, find her place in the world, and a new life for her and young son, Kye. But her dreams of a future are shattered when her son's security is challenged, and the rich and privileged Texan, Nate Hollingsworth sails into the bay. Now Ani must not only fight for her son, but also a growing attraction she has to the one type of man she loathes.

Nate is on a mission - to fulfill his mother's last wish, and change his life. Dropping anchor in the idyllic Resolution harbor, he didn't anticipate becoming involved in illegal fishing, a murder, or an unexpected attraction to the most exasperating woman he has ever met.

The Australian tropical Island, Resolution, sets the scene again for adventures, dreams, and new beginnings. A New Resolution is the final book in the 'Resolution' trilogy, following Back to Resolution and Beyond Resolution.

About the Author:

Rose Dee was born in Ingham, North Queensland, Australia. Her childhood experiences growing up in a small beach community would later provide inspiration for her first novel. Rose, who holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree, decided to try her hand at writing two years ago. The result of that attempt is her first novel, Back to Resolution. Her novels are inspired by the love of her coastal home and desire to produce exciting and contemporary stories of faith for women. Rose's other releases include Beyond Resolution - the second book in the 'Resolution' series. And A New Resolution the final book in the series. Rose has also co-written a novel in conjunction with three other outstanding Australian Authors: The Greenfield Legacy. Rose resides in Mackay, North Queensland with her husband, young son, and mischievous pup, Noodle.

Giveaway:

For all ACRBA members who post the will get an entry into this giveaway. All who leave a comment on any blogs will get an entry into the giveaway. The more blogs you comment on the more entries. This giveaway is open to Australian readers. To enter you need to answer a question about what part of North Queensland you would like to see or leave a comment with a question for Rose. Comments saying sounds interesting enter me will not be equate to an entry. Also leave a way to contact you if you win for example myemail at mymail dot com. entries open til Thursday 12 Dec.

FIRST PRIZE:

E-Reader (Details below) AND: an e-reader version of each one of my 4 novels – the 3 ‘Resolution’ series novels, and The Greenfield Legacy (gifted via email).

E-Reader:

Reader™ with 6.0" paper-like touch screen (Red)

Model:

PRST2RC

This slim and light Reader with touch screen puts thousands of your favourite stories at your fingertips. Effortlessly turn the page with a swipe of your finger and the glare-free screen reads just like a real book, even under direct sunlight.

• 6" E-Ink® Pearl is designed to feel like a real book with a glare-free paper-like screen for reading

• Battery life of up to 2 months with wireless off and up to 1.5 months with wireless on. Up to 30,000 continuous page turns when reading only

• Let your friends and family know what you are reading and share excerpts up to 140 characters with Facebook® built into the Reader™

• Store posts, articles, and text-based webpages all in your Reader™ with Evernote’s integrated services

• Access public library eBooks and PDF files through the integrated OverDrive® service

• eBook purchases will need to be completed via computer

SECOND PRIZE:

A copy of ‘The Greenfield Legacy’, and a Silver and Amber Grapevine inspired pendant. Really pretty, and ties in nicely with TGL as it is set on a vineyard in the McLaren Vale region. Also the cover is pendant inspired.

THIRD PRIZE:

A personalised sign copy of each books in my ‘Resolution’ Series. 3 hard copy books in total.