Desert Deluge - Gordon, Heather Anne

. .

Résumé :
Caught in a storm in the Australian Outback, the heat and dust turning to cool mud in the aftermath of an ex tropical cyclone, Helen and Kelly fight for justice and the truth. Helen Hamilton writes horror fiction. In her mid-thirties, Helen's focus on her career is starting to pay off with her novels becoming popular but she's on a tight deadline and distracted by the need to pack up her childhood home after the death of her father fifteen months ago. Helen travels from Brisbane to the outback and is reunited with her first lover. Challenging circumstances threaten to derail their future as they battle the troubles from the past. Kelly Wells is the Officer in Charge at a remote police station. Her abilities are much admired, and she has the respect of her team. Why then, is life so complicated?

Biographie:
Writing an 'adult novel' has been a long-held dream for Heather Anne Gordon. The Covid19 Pandemic during 2020 provided the isolation and thinking time to imagine a volatile situation and to develop the characters for a first foray into crime fiction. Heather's experiences of working in outback Australia, her interactions with people of varied charisma, style and backgrounds provide the foundation for her imagination to travel. The pandemic provided the opportunity to immerse herself in the process of writing.Heather is an unconventional artist and author, unconcerned by fad or fashion. Her mosaic and collage art is based on imagination, created from intuition with a strong sense of narrative, explores her experiences in rural and remote regions and demonstrates her passion for the Australian environment.A long time ago in her professional life, Heather's writing was structured for formal reports, research and project work, grants applications, funding submissions and recording meeting minutes. Heather's venture into children's stories during the first wave of Australia's Covid19 pandemic included journaling her isolation and recording the changes in her garden. While the children who received the unique handmade concertina collage books were appreciative, Heather missed the adult conversations centred around projects and nothing to do with Covid19.Heather had always wanted to write an 'adult novel' so she used technology to create a 'reading group', essentially crowd-sourcing the names for her characters. Encouraged by the reading group's feedback and demand for more chapters, Heather persisted with writing. Heather was supported by friends who provided layers of proof reading and another friend who knew someone with expertise in publishing adult fiction.Heather tapped into her network for their expertise about a range of matters, grounding her story in Andamooka because she couldn't travel there. Aware that women writers are often judged in their personal lives by what they write, Heather has tossed aside any perceived conflict between writing children's stories and an adult murder mystery, to craft a story around an event in the past that has repercussions today with a weather event generating drama and unpredictability in an isolated, harsh environment.