Danielle Hawkins – Love in the Country

Danielle Hawkins is a qualified veterinarian and busy farmer’s wife who writes popular rural  rom coms set in New Zealand.  She got started, she says, because she needed a new project and she’d “already painted the house.” Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Danielle talks about  how popular vet James Heriott inspired her and  writing “unromantic” romance. And for fans – or people who’d like to be fans – we’ve got a great Giveaway: two paperback copies of Danielle’s latest book, when it all went to custard to give away in a draw. One each week, for the next two weeks, so enter the draw here or on Facebook.  Entries close July 20, so get in now your own copy of Danielle’s latest funny romcom. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: How Danielle got started in rural romance The ‘nicest rejection letter’ ever Living in her favourite place on earth Why she’s tired of sanitized vet shows Treating Kiwis (the birds) with runny noses A best-seller who doubts her own success Where you can find Danielle Hawkins: Facebook: @DanielleHawkinsAuthor What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Danielle. .  Hello there Danielle and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Danielle: Hi Jenny, thanks. Jenny: Look, you’re a qualified veterinarian, and a farmer’s wife living on a sheep and beef farm, raising two children. And you decide one day that you want to be a romance author. Is that how it happened? And was there a Once Upon A Time moment when you decided; I’ve just got to write a book? Danielle Hawkins – rurtal romcom author and country vet, at home on the farm with her children. Danielle: Oh well, not exactly. I never decided to be a romance writer and I was rather surprised when this was how I was labeled, because you just think that you’ve written a book. You don’t put it in any particular box. But I started writing. I was at home with a baby and I wasn’t working full time. Actually I wasn’t working at all, apart from being at home with a baby ,and I was bored. I just I wanted a project. Looking for a project . . . Jenny: It’s that simple? You wanted a project? There’s a million people who would like a project, but they don’t choose to write a book. Danielle: Oh, I painted the house first. And then I wrote a book. Jenny: I painted the house first! That sounds so Kiwi. Your books have been described as a cross between Doc Martin, the TV series and the stories of James Herriott. I’ve gathered that when you were a teenager you wanted to be James Herriott. So it must be quite cool for you, is it? Danielle: Absolutely. That’s a wonderful compliment. No one has ever done, I don’t think, what James Herriott has done. His books  appeal to people who know nothing about veterinary medicine and yet they’re not patronising and boring to people who do know all about it. That’s such a skill. I’m so impressed. Finding her right niche Jenny: It’s lovely. You’ve now written four very well-received novels that can be best described as distinctly rural New Zealand romantic comedies. Was it a matter of ‘write what you know?’ You say you didn’t start out writing romance. So how did you come to be put in that slot in the end? Danielle: Oh well I started writing, and the first thing I wrote was rubbish. Even I could tell it was rubbish. And then I wrote something else, and then something else. The one that I submitted to a publisher was Number Four or Number Five, I think. It was a dystopian story, set in New Zealand, where we’d been overtaken by this group of religious fundamentalists and we’d all been plunged back into the age of  horses and carts and long skirts and that sort of thing. The ‘nicest rejection letter’ ever And I submitted it and I got back quite possibly the nicest rejection letter ever. They said ‘quite nicely written but terrible idea. Why don’t you try rural romance fiction? That stuff sells well.’ So I did. Jenny:  The other one sounds a bit like Amish in New Zealand. Danielle: Yes. Probably it wasn’t a very good idea. Jenny: And your first book, when you got on this streak of finding your niche, was called Dinner at Rose’s. It sold well and it was translated into German and Italian.  It must have been wonderful to have such success with your first book. Why do you think that it appealed to international readers? The appeal for German readers Danielle: I think that Germans do quite like New Zealand fiction. I know that Mary Scott, who wrote the same sort of thing, but 50 years before I did. She was always translated into German because the Germans liked stories about New Zealand. I think that’s all it was. Jenny: Yes. Even in the literary field there are  quite good links between New Zealand and Germany aren’t there? Danielle: Well unfortunately I’ve fallen off. They haven’t wanted the last couple. Jenny: The heroines in your stories are very much ordinary women. In Dinner At Rose’s the central character gets dumped by her boyfriend in Melbourne and she comes home to New Zealand to gather herself together again. And in Chocolate Cake For Breakfast the heroine somehow scores an All Black boyfriend who at the beginning. she doesn’t even recognise is an All Black. They are characters woman can very much identify with. I wonder if that’s part of their charm? ‘That’s my life’ Danielle: Oh but I hope so. Yeah. You always have to start if you write – or rather I have to start – I write in the first person, with somebody a bit like me, who thinks a bit like me about most things, and you know that’s my life. So it just works out like that Jenny:  Do you get emails from readers saying that kind of thing? Danielle: Yes. Yes I do. I get really nice e-mails actually. Jenny: I think I saw one where they said it was so nice to see a romance with a divorced woman or with a broken up marriage at the center of it. They appreciated that you didn’t  shy away from that situation as being unromantic. The most unromantic first date Danielle: Yeah I guess so. You know I used to struggle to keep finding different stories. So you know you have to get to these things eventually. Jenny: And you also had quite a bit of the visionary science comes into it. And I was amused that in Chocolate Cake For Breakfast there must be the most unromantic first date that ever has ever happened. The vet takes the All Black along on an emergency call-out to birth of a calf which turned out to be a stillborn calf. It’s a very detailed account, and I think some readers have commented it gave them just a little bit Too Much Information. Do you think that your veterinary aspect got carried away there? Chocolate Cake for Breakfast – Danielle Hawkins ‘Sanitized’ vet stories? No thanks! Danielle: Well you know I did it on purpose, Jenny, because I get so tired of sanitized vet stories. We get quite a lot on TV, and it’s no one’s fault, but you end up with the only things that are suitable to show to a general audience being re-homing the little kitten and clipping the alpaca’s toenails. And that’s just not what the job’s like. So I did it on purpose and and perhaps I went a little bit overboard because I was trying to make a point. Jenny: Fantastic. And what sort of feedback did you get one? Danielle: Well the Germans hated it. And that annoyed me, because they rewrote the scene without asking me. It really annoyed me because my name was at the bottom of it. So I requested it and translated it painstakingly with my seventh form German and I realized that it no longer made sense and it was medically impossible. So I rewrote them an English sanitized version and said ‘Please use that one.’ A memorable beginning Jenny: That’s a really lovely story. In the most recent one – when it all went to custard – there’s a memorable opening line. It starts: “I wasn’t enjoying the afternoon of  February 23 even before I learned that my husband was having an affair.” What a great way to start a book where the central character is struggling to hold her life together. We have mentioned this already, but there is a distinctly anti-romantic thread in your work, isn’t there? Danielle: Absolutely. I do like things to end happily and I love love stories but I really don’t like mushy ones, so perhaps I sabotage them a little bit. You know, as soon as something sweet and touching happens I have to make it silly or funny. Jenny: Yes. And I’m amused also that book title –  none of the words are in capitals. They’re all in lowercase. And I wondered again if that’s another way of saying ‘I’m not pretentious.’ Obviously your publishers see that as part of the branding as well to to allow you to do it that way or for them to decide to do it that way. Nailing the ironic humour Danielle: I don’t know actually. I don’t get any say in what they’re going to do with covers and titles, which is sometimes a little bit scary because you worry that they’re not going to get the right idea. But I do think they did that one really nicely. Jenny: There wasn’t any conversation with you before they did it? Danielle: Oh, you get sent it. And they ask do you like this, but I think if you didn’t then it wouldn’t matter. Jenny: Yes sure. And one of the things that makes them so truly Kiwi is the humor. Very much understated. How would you define Kiwi humor and how do you manage to nail it so well? Danielle: Well thank you Jenny. Of course I try to nail it, but I’m never sure if I do. I think you’re right about our humor. It’s more British isn’t it? It’s quite deprecating whereas the Americans will make a joke and nudge you in the ribs and stop and wait for you to laugh. I suppose it’s just a cultural thing, but I never find that kind of humor quite so funny. Just ‘being a natural Kiwi’ Jenny: I think even compared with the English we’re probably even further down the scale when it comes to understatement. I think there is something that’s distinctly Kiwi about your books. Danielle: Yes. Well I suppose being Kiwi yourself. And I like dialogue and I like to try and get it right. So of course it’s going to come out very much like the way that I talk. Jenny: Yes. And the other thing is the relationships. There’s a nice authentic quality about them. The women and the men see and accept each other, warts and all. Sometimes they don’t have any choice in the matter. And the worst thing is to be a pretentious person like Chris, Harry’s boyfriend in the most recent book. And it  struck me that one of the things you also do is answer some deep hope every woman has that she’s going to be appreciated for who she is rather than because she’s got lipstick on. Authenticity important Danielle: Oh absolutely. Well I suppose that would be very important to me and probably to everybody else. Jenny: Do you think that it’s something that’s very commonly achieved? Danielle: I don’t know! Jenny: In our world women are always being pushed into something that they’re not to win the approval of others. And your women never do that. Danielle: Do you mean since we’re little and we’re told to be nice and polite? Jenny: Yes. And then when we’re older we worry about what we’re going to look like and whether so-and-so is going to like that the way we look. That kind of thing. You know, you’re too fat or you’re too thin. You’re too tall or you’re too noisy or you’re too talkative or something or other. Danielle: Yes. Isn’t a great relief not to be a teenager anymore? Jenny: Totally. So I wondered . . . Enter the draw to win a copy of Danielle’s latest best seller Is there any secret of success?J Is there one thing you’ve done more than any other that you’d see as being the secret to your success as a writer? We’re talking now more about the general writing career than  specific books. (Editor Note: The week we published this podcast interview, Danielle’s book was in the NZ Best Seller lists.) Danielle: Goodness. I don’t actually know that I have had a great deal of success Jenny. I mean, a book in New Zealand doesn’t have to sell very many copies before it’s called a bestseller. And you know it’s very easy to say that sort of stuff  and not have huge sales and great international contracts or anything like that behind it. I think any success I’ve had is very moderate. You know I wish that the writing was enough to pay the mortgage but it definitely isn’t. A very typically modest author Jenny: Yes, I can understand what you’re saying. But it’s all relative isn’t it? I mean four books published by a trad publisher for starters. That’s one notch on your belt. And I can tell you from experience that when I was trying to order your books through the Auckland Public Library I was like about number 40 on a list of about 80 people wanting it. They were incredibly popular in the library. Danielle: Oh that’s lovely to hear. Jenny: Perhaps you didn’t know that. But honestly if you  look up a Danielle Hawkins book, particularly one of the more recent ones, you’ll find that there’s a big waiting list of people wanting to read them. So I think you can definitely put another notch in your belt for that…. but you’re typically modest and understated aren’t you?. ‘Success’ is a moving target Danielle: Well I don’t know if it’s that so much Jenny. Perhaps it’s just being an ungrateful sod. You know it’s such a moving target. You think that all you’d like to do in the world is be published and it would be so exciting. And then you think ‘Gosh, but you know this other person on Facebook they’ve sold their book to all sorts of countries and I haven’t. Yes it’s very good to remember to be more grateful. Jenny: All writers have a danger of falling into  “comparisonitis.” Danielle: I must say, yes, absolutely I do. I try hard not to. And I’m certainly much better at it than I was. Jenny: You would look to many as if you – to use the old cliche –  ‘have it all.’ You work two days a week at something that you love. You keep a garden and raise kids and farm, etc. But I was interested to see in one of the interviews that you said “Sure, a woman can have it all –  for about a week.” Your advice to other women was “don’t be too hard on yourself.” And that seemed to be very good advice. How do you manage that whole thing of keeping it in perspective? The dangers of ‘doing it all’ Danielle: It gets easier and easier and better and better. Yes. It’s just reminding yourself that you don’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to have a clean house and wonderful children and the international book deal. But we all struggle with it, don’t we? That’s such a girl thing. We’re so hard on ourselves. Jenny: Yes that’s right. Are you in danger of still wanting to do too much or do it all? Danielle: I don’t think so. I think probably 10 years ago I really felt like that, a bit inadequate. And then you know, the older you get, the more you realize that that incredibly trendy, pulled together person that you see down at the school bus, has got issues too. Yes. That just makes it better. A family farming legacy Jenny: The farm that you are on now, I think has been in the family for four generations and your  grandfather Arthur Cowan was a renowned conservationist. I understand the family has continued in that tradition and certainly the idea of retaining the family farm was part of the central story in this most recent book. So I assume that is was also something that you value highly? Danielle: I do. I’m so lucky that this farm has always been my favorite place in the world. To get to marry someone who loves it and has fitted in – Yes, it’s amazing. And you know, you don’t just wander out and buy a farm these days, you can’t do it without family support. There’s just so many lucky things that have happened, to allow us to be here. Jenny: Yes. So tell us a bit about the conservation side of things.  Do you have any engagement with that? A visionary forebear Danielle: A little I guess. My grandfather was pretty visionary. You know he bought the place in 1951 I think. And the first thing he did, almost, was put a fence around the remaining bush. So we’ve got this beautiful big 150 acre block right through the middle, and some smaller blocks. And my husband mostly does the work, but I help out. He runs trap lines and bait stations and stuff all the way through it. He’s got up to 500 now. Yes. And it’s really, really cool. You know before Grandpa died a few years ago he’d got to see already the results of doing all that intensive trapping. Because they didn’t used to realize that that was a thing and you needed to do it. But it was so cool that Grandpa had got to see that tomtits had come back and that we had robins now. That’s really special. Jenny: It’s wonderful, you know. Tell us a bit about the farm. How big is it and what do you run there? Danielle: We have 350 ha effective. And about another 100 ha in bush. We’ve got 1200 ewes and the cattle are all dairy grazers that are just  growing up to go home at two years old to be milked. Jenny: And your work in the vet practice? You’ve kept that up partly because you love to be a vet. Is that right? Danielle: Yes I do. I love being home and having this part time work lifestyle so that I get to cruise around and do garden stuff and kids stuff. But I don’t think I’d be a very good fulltime stay-at-home Mum. So it’s really nice to get off and be a professional just occasionally. Jenny: Now you are a large animal vet so what sort of animals? I mean obviously cows, maybe horses. Tell us a bit about your work. Danielle: I avoid horses like the plague, whenever I possibly can. I’m terrified of the damn things.  I’m very fond of cows. and I do  sheep and beef  consultancy advice. That’s my particular interest. Jenny: Do you have anything like alpacas in your area? Best place to see a Kiwi – Otorohanga Kiwi House Pic Credit: Stuff NZ Siobhan Downes Danielle: A few yes. Alpacas are lovely. And  I get to do the Kiwi House in Otorohanga, which is very cool. Jenny: So what sorts of problems do Kiwis have? Fainting tuataras Danielle: The Kiwis? Oh well they are quite prone to getting runny noses and getting pneumonia occasionally. And we had one who who had terrible trouble laying her eggs. Then at the moment we’ve got a fainting tuatara that we’re all scratching our heads over wondering what on earth to do with that? Jenny: So what’s your solution for the fainting tuatara? Danielle: I have none. It’s to not stress the tuatara. That’s  my only suggestion to date. That’s it. It’s good for me, doing this wildlife medicine stuff. Because you know after nearly 20 years it’s not that I’m a fabulous expert, but you know most of the things that are going to go wrong with cows and sheep. And then to get these totally different species, where you don’t even know what normal is. Oh it’s great. How Danielle likes to relax Jenny: Yes  Equestrian veterinary work is probably a very specialist practice isn’t it? Danielle: It is.  One of my very good friends and classmates is a very good horse vet, so I just have her on speed dial  and it works really well. Jenny: That’s great. So how do you relax when you’re not working? Danielle: Oh. I love reading and gardening. And going out on the farm and helping out. Nothing very exciting. I’m very dull. Jenny: And what gardening? What do you do with the garden? Danielle: Oh the garden is fairly new. We’ve lived here twelve years so it’s only that old and it’s quite big. We’ve got a big lawn and just to really make everybody hate me  my dad comes up the road on his ride on and mows it for me. So I don’t have to mow my lawn. Isn’t that amazing?. An English country garden It’s very much like grandma’s which is just down the road. She was a fabulous gardener. She had four acres with bush all around and a very sort of English country garden feel. So I’ve got lots and lots of things from her and from all my gardening aunts and my mum. Jenny: Wonderful. And do you do vegetables as well?. Do you grow for your food? Danielle: Oh, I’m not a great vegetable gardener actually. I’m afraid most of my vegetable garden at the moment is cosmos and chicory. I’m trying to create a wildflower bed but the pigs broke in yesterday so my wildflower bed is not looking great. Jenny: True ‘Country Life.’ Danielle: Absolutely. I do good rhubarb, but it’s not hard. What Danielle is binge reading Jenny: That’s lovely. Look the show is called The Joys of Binge Reading because it has become an age where people tend to binge read digital books. So turning to Danielle as reader. Tell us a bit about what you like to read and who are you reading at the moment? Danielle: All right. Well, I am a real binge reader. I love to find an author that I really like and read all of their stuff. So Terry Pratchett is one of the authors I  read “on a loop.” And Georgette Heyer is another. I love her books. And at the moment I’ve just discovered that on Amazon you can download old D.E. Stevenson books for only about a dollar each. So I’ve got a whole lot of those and I’m loving them. Jenny: I’ve never heard of D.E. Stevenson. Tell me about him or her. Miss Buncle’s Book – a D. E. Stevenson favourite. Danielle: You have such a treat in store. She was a Scottish writer and she wrote in probably the 30’s through to the 60’s. She was very prolific. So some of her books are merely pleasant but the good ones are wonderful. You want to start with Miss Buncles Book . You must read it. Miss Buncle decides that she needs to write a book, because she’s poorer than she expected to be with the world downturn. And so she writes this book all about everybody in her village and then it becomes a fabulous runaway success and they’re all hunting desperately for the author so that they can run them out of town. It’s very funny. No gripping sagas of our time Jenny: So what kind of niche would they fit into? Danielle: Perhaps country village life stories? They’re  very gentle and very pleasant. They’re certainly not bodice rippers. Often people do get together in the end but sometimes not. Yes. They’re really  relaxed and easy. I tend not to read “gripping sagas of our time” that are going to keep me awake at night. I’m not very good at those.. . Jenny: And who amongst the current authors are you reading. Have you got any favorites amongst that you know more recently published? Danielle: Oh Yes, lots.  Philip Pullman. I’m very fond of and I’ve been reading his books to the kids lately. So we’ve just gone through all of those ones again. What else? I’m having a blank. Even though there are plenty of nice things. Jenny: Did you get into The Hunger Games with the kids? Funny and clever and uplifting Danielle: I did. Actually I love the Hunger Games. Yes. I really liked Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. It’s really nice. I sort of avoided it because it was such a runaway success. Which is a bit silly really. But it’s lovely. And a Swedish author called Fredrik Backman  (A Man Called Ove and other New York Times best sellers. ) He has been translated to English and they are gorgeous. They just uplifting and and happy and funny and clever and awesome. Jenny: That’s great. It’s definitely a theme coming through here that you don’t like anything that’s grim and too navel gazing perhaps? Danielle: Oh no, although I read The Narrow Road To The Deep North (Richard Flanagan) a few years ago and I’m glad I did. But I’m still not over it. Doing it all again . . any changes? Jenny: Circling around and looking back over where you’ve come from and where you are today at this stage in your career  . . .If you were doing it all again, is there anything you would change or would you do it more or less as you have done it. Danielle: I don’t think I would change anything. Yes, which is very nice to realize. Jenny: Good. Is there anything that you would like to try your hand at that you haven’t had time for yet? I mean in the area of your writing; is there an area that you feel you’d like to go back to  – say dystopia  or YA for example? Creating an awesome fantasy Danielle: Yes I would like to do that. I’d like to create a really awesome fantasy series. You know a really clever alternate reality. LIkePhilip Pullman or Ursula Le Guin or one of those people. They’re just so perfect, the alternate universes they’ve created.  There’s nothing in them to trip you up  – no little inconsistencies that I can find anyway. I would very much like to do that. I don’t think I’m clever enough. But I’ll try. Jenny: Well that sounds good. I definitely think you should give it a go because you’ve now built up the street cred with the things that you’ve done already to be able to use that as a platform if you wanted to. Danielle: Maybe. I have a feeling that publishers hate it when you leave your genre after they’ve built you up in it. Latest project is YA fantasy Jenny: You might use a different publisher or something. Heaven forbid that I’d suggest that you should do that. But you know there might come a day when you feel like ‘I just really need to do something to refresh me.’  A lot of writers do those things in parallel. Like they still continue with the things that they’ve made their name at, but they do something on the side over a longer period. That’s maybe something you could consider. Danielle: Yes.  In fact the book that I’m writing at the moment is a young adult fairy tale thing. So yes. And I don’t know if anyone will ever want to publish it. But trying to write things just to get published is probably pretty self-defeating, I think. It’s much better to write something because you think it’s fun. Jenny: Yes, because that comes through doesn’t it?. Danielle: Yes absolutely. And you know it’s hard writing a book. You get sick of it and you’re sure it’s never going to be any good.  If you’re not really excited by the whole thing and it’s not so much fun that you’d rather do it than anything else, I don’t think that you’d get there. Finding time to write Jenny: That’s right. Tell us a bit about your work habits. How do you organize your day? Do you have a definite period in the morning? A block of time that you put aside for writing? How do you do it? Danielle: I try to get up early. So 5:30 or 6 am  – something like that  – and write for an hour or two before everyone else gets up. I’m finding it at the moment even though I’m doing that I’m making terribly slow progress and I’ll look at my mornings haul and go “a hundred words. Great.” But never mind. Because the rest of the day does tend to vanish. Writing is something that it’s never urgent to do it right now. You know, it can always be put off, because of something else or you’re needed  down the farm or you could you go and get a new tractor battery or something. The next year – looking ahead Jenny: Yes!. So what is next for Danielle the writer in terms of the next twelve months or so? Have you got things that are in the cooker that your publisher is expecting? Where are you going with all of that? Danielle: No no. This book that’s just come out – when it all went to custard – that was the second of the two book deal. So I’m unemployed and fancy free. So I’ll carry on with my fairy tale and see how it goes. Jenny: Good. You could consider self publishing when you get to it. Danielle: Yes, I could. But I’m not mad keen because of the promotion stuff. I don’t enjoy it all and I don’t think it’s very good for my mental health. I’d much rather have somebody else do it. Promotion not a favourite thing Jenny: Yes. I must say, it is a huge amount of work. I think somebody used an expression which I hated when I heard it. But they said it’s a bit like building a house where you think that when you’ve got the walls and the roof on and the floor in, that you’ve got like 80 percent done. And it’s only really about 40 percent because of all the unseen stuff, the plumbing, the wiring etc.. Well apparently they say that when you self publish a book, writing the book is only 40 percent of it and 60 per cent is the marketing and all the rest of the stuff that you have to do. Danielle: Oh yes that’s right. And I mean, I just don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t have very much time and I certainly don’t want to devote to something that’s probably going to make me feel not very good about myself and I don’t enjoy doing. Finding Danielle on Facebook Jenny: It is hard. I’m sure that you can you’ll be able to find a way around it. And we’ll be very interested in seeing the outcome of it. Where can readers find you online? You do interact with your readers, don’t you? Where can they find you online, Danielle? Danielle: My only online presence is a Facebook page, called Danielle Hawkins Author. (@DanielleHawkinsAuthor) I’m pretty good at responding when people write to me there. I’m not very good at doing the media stuff and I have found that I take it all far too seriously and lose all perspective. So I’m much better to stay not doing much of it. Jenny: Do you mean that if people say something unflattering, you take it to heart too much? Danielle: No, not that so much. You don’t get very much negative comment. But just that the whole thing of “Oh my gosh I’ve got to craft my image.” I hate having to think of some new post on Instagram and what if it doesn’t get a hundred likes or a thousand likes and the last one got more . . .. Oh, I would just prefer not to engage with it. Jenny: Yes. I can understand that. Danielle: Some people do it so well and I really admire them, but I don’t seem to be able to. Jenny: So am I hearing you say that we’re not going to be having any more romantic comedies from you? Danielle: Oh no, not at all. I like writing that sort of thing. But that’s not what I’m doing at the moment. Jenny: That’s good. Well look it’s been wonderful talking to you . We’ve gone over our 30 minutes, so I’ll let you go get back to the farm or the writing. What have you got going for the rest of the day? Danielle: Oh I was going to go and pick up some silage wrap at the bottom of the  hill and shovel up some dags  and then we’ve got netball after school, so it’s not very glamorous today. Jenny: That’s lovely. It’s real farm talk.  Absolutely. Thanks so much Danielle. Danielle: Thanks Jenny. If you’ve enjoyed Danielle’s rural rom coms you might also enjoy Sarah Barrie’s Australian rural mysteries or NZ author Brynn Kelly’s romantic suspense set in exotic locations. Right Woman, Wrong Time, with Brynn Kelly Australian rural mysteries with Sarah Barrie Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]