{"id":58941,"date":"2016-03-23T17:31:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T06:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=58941"},"modified":"2016-04-14T18:05:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-14T07:05:57","slug":"58941","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2016\/03\/23\/58941\/","title":{"rendered":"Fleur McDonald: My 5 Inspirations for Indigo Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Fleur McDonald, author of Indigo Storm<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"9781760112615\"<\/a>In July last year, my partner, Garry, the kids and I took a holiday to the snow. It was something all of us had wanted to do, but never had the opportunity \u2013 it was sort of a bucket list thing.<\/p>\n

When we arrived in Jindabyne, both Garry and I fell in love with the quaint little town; it was steeped in history, had groovy little pubs and was seriously bouncing with people.<\/p>\n

I thought it would be a fantastic place to set part of my next book, Indigo Storm.<\/em><\/p>\n

After we finished there, we headed back to SA to spend some time with my parents. We had plans to drive the Strezleki Track and have a few nights at Innamincka as well as seeing some of the places Bourke and Wills travelled through. However, on the day we arrived, mum was diagnosed with melanoma and was told she needed to have lymph nodes removed. That changed our plans and we decided to spend as much time with mum and dad as we could and just do a few short trips out to the Flinders Ranges. We spent a day in a little town called Blinman and a day exploring some ruins called Kanyaka. What struck me about these places was the history. With history there has to be secrets. That\u2019s what writer\u2019s love \u2013 secrets.<\/p>\n

These three places feature heavily in Indigo Storm. I especially loved the Flinders Ranges for all the spots there would be to dump (fictional!) bodies!<\/p>\n

The main theme through Indigo Storm<\/em> is how Ashleigh\/Eliza has to remember who she was before she married Dominic. I\u2019ve gone through some huge upheavals in the past two years and this is certainly something I\u2019ve had to do.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really hard to remember who you are, when you\u2019ve been a mum, carer and farmer over the last twenty years. I\u2019ve spent hours on the beach, or pacing up and down the creek lines at mum and dad\u2019s, just thinking, working out what I want from life. Ashleigh\/Eliza does the same thing.<\/p>\n

\"FleurDomestic violence is one of the biggest issues in the modern world. I honestly believe there can never be too much written or highlighted about this type of abuse. Being in the privileged position of having the \u2018eye of readers\u2019 I really wanted to show the dramatic effects this can have on people \u2013 while they are within that situation and what they can become when out of it.<\/p>\n

Of course, there is always crime in my books \u2013 I saw a documentary on animal smuggling about two years ago and thought it was really interesting. Hence, the poaching theme throughout Indigo Storm.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ideas and inspiration can hit me at any moment; even a small conversation can get the creative juices flowing. One of my favourite past times is sitting on my patio with friends, talking. It was during one of these get togethers\u2019 I devised the sneaky plan of who the \u2018baddie\u2019 ended up being. Now I can\u2019t say too much about this, but I never like to plan because if I know what is going to happen, there\u2019s every chance you, as the reader, will work it out too. I was complaining I was nearly finished writing the book and I still didn\u2019t know who the baddie was going to be and how all the different threads were going to get pulled together.<\/p>\n

One of my friend\u2019s mentioned a crime show they\u2019d watched and how the guy who had committed the crime was incredibly close to the victim. And that was all I needed\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fleur McDonald, author of Indigo Storm In July last year, my partner, Garry, the kids and I took a holiday to the snow. It was something all of us had wanted to do, but never had the opportunity \u2013 it was sort of a bucket list thing. When we arrived in Jindabyne, both Garry and I fell in love with the quaint little town; it was steeped in history, had groovy little pubs and was seriously bouncing with people. I thought it would be a fantastic place to set part of my next book, Indigo Storm. After we finished there, we headed back to SA to spend some time with my parents. We had plans to drive the Strezleki Track and have a few nights at Innamincka as well as seeing some of the places Bourke and Wills travelled through. However, on the day we arrived, mum was diagnosed with melanoma and was told she needed to have lymph nodes removed. That changed our plans and we decided to spend as much time with mum and dad as we could and just do a few short trips out to the Flinders Ranges. We spent a day in a little…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":58942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,91,6677,62,73],"tags":[6699,2027,6697,4577,6698,6148],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/9781760112615.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58941"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59498,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941\/revisions\/59498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}