A Just Man—Choosing Family Book 4

Sometimes I feel like a bower bird. So many bright shiny things to collect, store, study, then turn into a book. And it can take years for all of the pieces to fall into place. A Just Man fits that category.

The initial inspiration for this book was my rage at the increase in the number of strip searches by cops involving underage girls (10-17 years), especially illegal strip searches.

In 2019, a sixteen year old girl was strip searched at a music festival. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) showed the then NSW Police Minister saying he “would want” officers to strip-search his children, after new data revealed 122 underage girls had been subjected to the practice since 2016. I was shouting at the screen. Especially given that the Law Enforcement and Conduct Commission had already heard that some officers didn’t know their obligation in relation to minors, and in the case of the 16-year-old, there was no justification for initiating the search. Ultimately, the police officer involved said it was “probably unlawful”.

So, let’s consider the facts: Under New South Wales legislation, police are only allowed to conduct field strip-searches where the urgency of the situation requires it. Where the person being searched is a minor, police are required to arrange to have a parent, guardian or support person present unless it’s necessary for the safety of the person or to prevent evidence being destroyed.

Sadly the situation of strip searching children continues. An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald in October 2023 talked about strip searching of minors being “a travesty of law and order”.

In March 2024, a report released by the Redfern Legal Centre noted that 1546 children (aged 10-17 years) have been strip searched by NSW Police within a seven year period from June 2016 to July 2023. Some key findings within the report are: 

  • the youngest child subjected to a strip search by NSW Police was a 10-year-old in 2017. 
  • over half of these searches occurred within police stations, (824 cases), while the remaining 46.71% (722 cases) occurred in public. 
  • First Nations children made up almost 45 per cent of children strip searched despite being only 6.2 per cent of the population aged 10-17 in NSW.  
  • the most recent statistics for the 2022/23 financial year show an increase of over 50% in strip searches of girls. 

So, I had the rage, which gave me a possible theme. But remember, I’m writing romance here, so it’s what comes after the rage that’s important. Centuries ago I read a romantic suspense novel by Paula Gosling. The leads were a cop and a university lecturer who’d first met years earlier when he was a young cop called to a university protest, and she was on the picket line. Their second meet up involves a murder. So, at least one other author had matched a cop and an arrestee.

I decided it was plausible for my rookie cop, Mick, and my teenage victim, Kelly, to meet again. My initial meeting was edgier than Gosling’s novel and a miscarriage of justice. How do Mick and Kelly move past that? How has that experience shaped the people they are now?

The title is a bit of a giveaway—remember, we’re talking romance here. A Just Man. “Just” is an adjective that carries so much weight. It means fair, open-minded, principled, ethical and trustworthy and a whole lot of yummy things I look for in my characters. But good intentions aren’t enough.

If you want to know how Kelly and Mick meet again and how they resolve their past, check out A Just Man—Choosing Family Book 4 releasing on 18 March 2025, pre-orders available now.

I’ll have copies with me at A Romantic Rendezvous in Sydney—23 March 2025. The day includes author panels, lunch hosted by some of your favourite authors, then an afternoon of book signing. Tickets still available: bit.ly/arr2025tix  Follow on FaceBook

A Just Man—Choosing Family Book 4

No matter where you run, the past will find you

Kelly needs to enhance her resume. Why else would she accept a placement in Tullamore facing her phobia about country towns? Years ago, a rookie cop humiliated her during an illegal strip search. Problem is, that former cop is now the deputy principal of her new high school and her boss. Sharing a house, a commute, and now an investigation to unravel a series of disasters that look like sabotage, Kelly takes the previously unthinkable step from enemies to allies to lovers.

Taking a job as deputy principal to uncover suspected corruption at the school, Mick plans to use the appointment as a stepping stone to principal of his own school. Then Kelly, his biggest mistake in his short time on the force, walks through his door. Given the chance to make amends brings peace for both, until Kelly is caught in the crosshairs of his investigation. Protecting her is his only goal.

You can find me and my books here: website FaceBook Instagram

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You can also contact me directly via the contact page on my website if you have any other questions.

Reflections at the start of 2025

The start of a new calendar year almost forces you to reflect on where you are and where you’re going as an author. Why am I still doing this?

Basically because a voice inside my head says write.

I’ve heard lots of presenters at conferences and in articles say—“Write what your heart tells you to write. Write what you want to read, and you’ll find an audience.”

I write about the kinds of characters who interest me, characters with personality traits I admire, people I’d like to have a chat with, then have wild monkey sex with.

However, long before I was published, an editor for a major publishing company told me, “It doesn’t matter how well you write. If your book isn’t the book we want at that moment, then we won’t touch it. We might pick up that same manuscript sometime in the future without you changing a word.”

I think a lot about the publisher’s “moment”. Has my story just missed the moment? Has the character type I have the hots for gone off the boil for the wider reading public?

I also think about the phrase “how well you write”? Some people write elegant, grammatically correct, lyrical prose, but their stories fail to captivate. Some writers have magical stories in their heads, but their prose is faulty. The second problem is far easier to fix than the first, and to be honest, I think a lot of readers don’t care about the prose if the story is compelling.

I’ve written a few books now. Not having the skills or resources for indie publishing, I queried some major publishing companies with manuscripts that had won or been finalists in competitions. The rejections were encouraging, often lengthy and involved real conversations. Then I got picked up by Inkspell Publishing, a small independent US publisher, from a competition. Having support makes a difference.

Next step—finding your audience—and in today’s remarkably interconnected world, it’s complicated. It’s hard to find numbers for how many new books Amazon publishes or uploads or distributes each day, but a figure that pops up in searches is 4,300. That’s a lot of competition for your book on any given day, unless you have some other claim to fame, a bottomless marketing budget, endless time, and influential friends—hey, I know Meaghan Markle. Well, not personally. Taylor Swift—she loved my book. I’m sure I saw her reading a book that looked exactly like mine.

Stop writing! whispers a voice in my ear. You should be marketing! Which brings us to social media and the constantly changing algorithms that highlight extremes rather than messages of hope and love, loyalty, enduring passion and happily-ever-afters. You can spend lifetimes navigating your way through this maze and never go viral. That’s before AI gobbles up and regurgitates your book under someone else’s name or a scam creams off any royalties.

And given that I’m baring my soul here: it’s incredibly difficult to cut in on established relationships between much-loved authors and their readers. There are only so many hours in a stressful day. Why wouldn’t you choose someone you’re familiar with, who you know will hit all the right spots for you, instead of taking a risk on a new to you author whose name you’re seeing for the first time? This is especially true if you’re offered a discount, or a chance to review a freebie. If you love an author, and you’re offered their next book or someone unknown, of course you’ll read your fav’s next book.

Would I like to see my name flown across Sydney on a banner, or written in the sky to float and fracture into single letters across suburbs, so people whisper my name in hushed tones—have you read Jennifer Raines’s latest contemporary romance? Of course, I would. But doubt is a constant companion. Am I a fraud? Is this a vanity project?

Out of the blue, I received a sms from someone I know, but rarely see. She’d read Betrayal—Choosing Family Book 3: she said

Out of order, but really enjoyed it. You are very good.

It only takes one voice, one person, and your day changes. Encouraging reviews and reader support are what keep me and other writers going. Oh! And that voice inside my head that says write, write, write.

As an author, my offer to you is hunks with depth, women who care, and heat with heart.

My 8th book, A Just Man, and the fourth in my Choosing Family series will be published on 18 March 2025, just in time for A Romantic Rendezvous in Sydney—23 March 2025. Tickets still available: bit.ly/arr2025tix  Follow on FaceBook

I’d love it if you dropped by to say hello and tell me what you like to read.

A Just Man—Choosing Family Book 4

No matter where you run, the past will find you

Kelly needs to enhance her resume. Why else would she accept a placement in Tullamore facing her phobia about country towns? Years ago, a rookie cop humiliated her during an illegal strip search. Problem is, that former cop is now the deputy principal of her new high school and her boss. Sharing a house, a commute, and now an investigation to unravel a series of disasters that look like sabotage, Kelly takes the previously unthinkable step from enemies to allies to lovers.

Taking a job as deputy principal to uncover suspected corruption at the school, Mick plans to use the appointment as a stepping stone to principal of his own school. Then Kelly, his biggest mistake in his short time on the force, walks through his door. Given the chance to make amends brings peace for both, until Kelly is caught in the crosshairs of his investigation. Protecting her is his only goal.

Find me on

You can also contact me directly via the contact page on my website if you have any other questions.

Trigger warnings and stuff I don’t want to read in a romance

Authors, academics and almost anyone who puts pen to paper have been thinking about trigger warnings for a while now. University courses carry trigger warnings. Television, streaming services, movies and books carry trigger warnings. I recently entered a writing competition and was asked to list trigger warnings.

People see trigger warnings as important content warnings to assist readers to choose or reject your novel based on topics they do or don’t want to read about, in particular, because a topic or experience might trigger traumatic memories.

Opinions are divided on whether or not they’re helpful.

In December 2022, The Conversation, published Proceed with caution: the trouble with trigger warnings, written by Jessica Gildersleeve, India Bryce and Kate Cantrell. They reviewed 20 peer-reviewed studies, published between 2010 and 2020. They found trigger warnings can be harmful to students, however their overall finding is that “when embedded as part of such a broader approach, trigger warnings can be a valuable tool for assisting with the management and reduction of trauma exposure.” The broader approach includes “a holistic, trauma-informed framework, across all disciplines, that promotes resilience and recovery through a skills-based approach to coping and capacity building”. So this is not a simple question, and there is no single or simple answer.

Trigger warnings in romance novels are also a hot topic.

Romance Rehab discussed trigger warnings and disclaimers in 2020, concluding that if a topic was included in a romance it should include a warning, for example: rape, domestic abuse, child abuse (all forms), self-harm, suicide, extreme drug abuse/overdose, animal abuse. The article added the no-brainer that “if the hero or heroine dies at the end of a book and there’s no HEA, I don’t need a disclaimer or trigger warning. I’ll need the author to reclassify the book because IT’S NOT A ROMANCE.”

Romances are by definition about emotions. Mine are about adults, with lived experiences, people we come to believe are real. As such, they have real experiences, so it’s impossible for them not to have experienced, viewed or heard about traumatic experiences. 

I don’t write on the page trauma, but I do refer to past incidents that have shaped my lead characters. I use those experiences to show why people might be hesitant to trust, or to open themselves up to further hurt. I look for hope and a happily-ever-after, so my writing goals are about healing and moving forward.

Recently, a few books have made me think about my personal triggers, although these are not necessarily books that trigger traumatic memories. They are books I don’t want to read, or don’t particularly enjoy, not because of the quality of the writing, but because I instantly reject characters exhibiting certain behaviours as romantic leads. These same characteristics and characters clearly resonate with other readers, who write glowing reviews. Have I said before that romance readers are a broad church? Well, they are.

So—stuff I don’t particularly want to read‑includes:

  1. Love triangles—walk away is my mantra. You either choose me or you don’t. I don’t care about the gender of the protagonist, but if one person is playing two people off each other it’s a turnoff for me. It’s a common trope in rom coms, and I’ve read some excellent examples, including by Australian authors. Scottish born author Mhairi McFarlane’s If I Never Met You has a twist where the female protagonist was dumped by her long-term partner. Devastated, she meets someone new, then her old partner decides he made a mistake and reappears. It’s a quirky take on the trope and almost won me over.
  2. Characters who will do anything for their love interest, including break the law, often violently—Nah! Vigilante justice has never worked for me, although it’s huge in popular culture. The entire notion that I, or my lover, can look at a situation and be the best combined cop, judge and jury is something I find increasingly insidious and disturbing. Having it peddled to me through romance freaks me out. I’m a bit of the view that a seriously bad boy will remain a bad boy, but hey, it’s not my role to diss with someone else’s fantasy.
  3. A lover who lies—this is my absolute biggie. Lying, especially when it’s critical to your lover’s sense of self is a turn off for me. Taking someone to bed with a big lie between you is not, to my mind, heroic.  Having said that, lots of great books play with secrets, lies and white lies, and I’ve used the seesaw of secrets and lies in some of my work. It’s a fine line.

Do you have strong views on trigger warnings or any tropes, themes or book characters that are always last on your to-be-read (TBR) list?

A Romantic Rendezvous—March 2025—Christmas giveaway

The Australian Romance Readers Association (ARRA) will again host A Romantic Rendezvous in Brisbane (22 March) Sydney (23 March) Melbourne (29 March) and Perth (30 March). Special guests will be Nalini Singh & Julie Ann Walker There will be panels, an author luncheon and a signing in each city. You can nominate the sessions you’d like to attend.

This Christmas, one lucky ARR2025 attendee will win a special treat—a $30 book voucher that they can spend at the signing.

To enter, readers need to take a selfie with one of their favourite books (ebooks count!) from one of the attending authors, then post it in the ARR2025 Attendees group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/arr2025attendees). Be sure to include the following in your post:

I’m looking forward to ARR2025 in <insert name of city> in March, and meeting <insert name of author/s>. Maybe I’ll see you there! #arr2025comp

(For an extra entry, tag a friend in the comments of your post.)

The winner will be drawn randomly on Christmas day from all entries.

Finally I’d like to wish everyone a happy and peaceful festive season with lots of good books to read. Links to mine are on the Books pages.

Find me on:

You can also meet me in Sydney – 23 March 2025 at A Romantic Rendezvous, contact me directly via the contact page on my website if you have any other questions.

Comparisons, reviews and well damn!

I’ve come to this topic via a roundabout route. I find it difficult to compare my writing and stories to other contemporary romance writers—to say, hey I’m the next Emily Henry, but shorter, or the next Ali Hazelwood without the STEM characters. I could say, my lead characters respect and like each other—Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood do that too, and it’s something I look for in a romance. I want sizzle, but I also want my heat with heart, so to echo Olive’s words in The Love Hypothesis “I really like you, and I really trust you …”

However, there’s an expectation, largely for marketing purposes, that you will compare yourself to current top performers, to give readers an idea of your style. Sounds a bit like a recipe for disaster to me. What happens if you deviate or disappoint them?

Another Australian author I was chatting to offered an alternative approach. Banter like author A, heart-warming characters like author B, scene setting like author X, and sizzle like author Y. This seems a better approach to me because no two writers are the same, unless one of them is AI generated and feeding off a real author’s creativity. I haven’t found my list of comparable authors yet. If I remind you of a fabulous romance author in some way, please feel free to let me know.

To be honest, I’d like readers to see me as sufficiently unique to want to read my next release because it’s me. Samples are available on all the e-book selling sites.

If anyone here has checked out my socials, you’ll know I’ve had some great reviews, some good reviews, and some ho-hum reviews. I’ve never had the kind of review that says “those are a few precious hours I’ll never get back” unless you count this one for Quinn, by design—Choosing Family Book 2 that said:

“This book is not suitable for people who are not familiar with carpentry work and antiques. The author has tried their best to explain the details of this kind of art, but it did not hold my interest much.”

That’s telling me. And can I raise my hand and say I’m not especially familiar with carpentry or antiques either? Although I like to look at beauty in nature and crafted by humans. I like wood and glass and clay and stone, and I could continue …

I’ve also had reviews that puzzle me. I like to think there’s some humour in my books and characters. Not laugh out loud and not all the time, but most people—and therefore most characters—show humour as well as seriousness, and balancing those two sides of a personality can get you deeper inside a character’s head and heart. So, the reviews for Masquerade—Choosing Family Book 1 that described it as a rom-com were completely unexpected.

“Kate and Liam are a hoot …”

“a charming rom-com full of emotion …”

“steamy, goodhearted and a great romcom ….”

“a comedic vibe …”

I’ll take the reviews, say thank you, and see if I can replicate that humour in other books, because sharing humour is a way of establishing connections. When I raised this with a fellow author, she suggested a lot of first-time readers of romance come via Booktok—Tiktok for books, and that they’re new to the various categories within the romance genre. For example, she suggested they might use the term rom-com to refer to what emerging authors, authors, editors or industry specialists call contemporary romance. Booktok can be a disruptor, especially as not all authors use it.

Authors seek reviews because we’re told they’ll attract more readers and hopefully more buyers of our books. But some nights I lie awake wondering if the algorithms are toying with me, and if I’m being punished for not succumbing to the lure of those constant messages that say if you spend just a bit more you’ll get thousands more hits. Has marketing trumped quality writing as the most important strategy for an upcoming author? You tell me.

There are, of course, other ways to draw attention to your books, interviews, public appearances, celebrity endorsements—do you know any celebrities?—word of mouth, begging every member of your extended family to buy at least six copies and leave them at bus stops and in street libraries. But balancing marketing time with writing time is tricky, especially when I know what I’d rather be doing. And now, I’ll return to my work in progress (WIP). I’m on a roll.

A Romantic Rendezvous—March 2025—Christmas giveaway

The Australian Romance Readers Association (ARRA) will again host A Romantic Rendezvous in Brisbane (22 March) Sydney (23 March) Melbourne (29 March) and Perth (30 March). Special guests will be Nalini Singh & Julie Ann Walker There will be panels, an author luncheon and a signing in each city. You can nominate the sessions you’d like to attend.

This Christmas, one lucky ARR2025 attendee will win a special treat—a $30 book voucher that they can spend at the signing.

To enter, readers need to take a selfie with one of their favourite books (ebooks count!) from one of the attending authors, then post it in the ARR2025 Attendees group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/arr2025attendees). Be sure to include the following in your post:

I’m looking forward to ARR2025 in <insert name of city> in March, and meeting <insert name of author/s>. Maybe I’ll see you there! #arr2025comp

(For an extra entry, tag a friend in the comments of your post.)

The winner will be drawn randomly on Christmas day from all entries.

Find me on

You can also meet me in Sydney – 23 March 2025 at A Romantic Rendezvous, contact me directly via the contact page on my website if you have any other questions.

Dear diary

Today I dug out an old manuscript from my bottom drawer. You know the drawer? The drawer of discarded dreams.

I was thrilled with it when I set it aside. I’d had some nibbles from editors of the bigger publishing houses—well-written, very evocative of Finland, and I should know because a family member is married to someone from Finland, but it’s the wrong length for our current series.

I reread it, and as you can imagine, was devastated to discover it wasn’t the masterpiece I remembered, or hoped it was. For a start, point of view (POV) was all over the place. My excuse for that is that I was experimenting. The result? Characterisation suffered. It was also a bit of a mishmash of tropes, and as an expert on romance recently said, readers have certain expectations of certain tropes and an author who doesn’t deliver them is likely to be punished in the socials. Oh dear!

Given the passage of time, there are also historical inaccuracies. I used the very public 1986 unsolved murder of Olof Palme, then Prime Minister of Sweden, as a starting point. The Swedish Government recently closed the case, saying they’d identified the assassin. Not everyone’s satisfied with this decision.

So where does this leave me? Helsinki is a long way from Australia, so is instantly exotic to us. A murder mystery—case closed, but with enough hanging threads to be intriguing. My female lead is guarded, but her caution can strike people as grumpiness. My male lead’s a natural optimist and has enough positives in his life to project a sunshine persona, but hey, there’s more here than meets the eye. A completely accidental meeting. She distrusts coincidences, especially when they involve journalists or writers interested in her famous dead father. He’s wow! Serendipity. This is my lucky day.

So, I’m feeling a tickle of excitement about tackling this manuscript, but it’s forced me to ask—why do I write? Why particularly do I write on those days when the muse has better things to do than hang on my every word? Something compels me to. I set my writing aside and say, No, I’ve had enough. It’s not working. But I go back every time, because I want to get this right. I want to tell the story of these people well, so you, the reader, are on their side. Finding Cleo (working title) is a standalone contemporary romance.

In the meantime, I’ve signed contracts with Inkspell Publishing for two more books in the Choosing Family Series.

  • A Just Man—Choosing Family Book 4 (release March 2025)
  • An Accidental Flatmate—Choosing Family Book 5 (release July 2025)

A Romantic Rendezvous March 2025

Meet me in Sydney – 23 March 2025.

Tickets on sale from 15 September 2024. Follow on FaceBook

The Australian Romance Readers Association will again host A Romantic Rendezvous in Brisbane (22 March) Sydney (23 March) Melbourne (29 March) and Perth (30 March). Special guests will be Nalini Singh & Julie Ann Walker There will be panels, an author luncheon and a signing in each city. You can nominate the sessions you’d like to attend.

Find me on

You can also contact me directly via the contact page on my website if you have any other questions.