Blog Tour: Introducing Northern Heat by Helene Young

I am honoured to be launching Helene Young‘s blog tour for her newest novel of romantic suspense, Northern Heat.

When Helene’s not writing novels she enjoys a busy career as the Queensland Regional Flying Manager with Australia’s largest regional airline. She’s worked in aviation for over 25 years and has 260 pilots reporting into her. She recently appeared in ‘Judith Lucy is All Woman’ in an episode showcasing women in aviation.
She has twice won the highly coveted RWA’s Romantic Book of the Year in 2011 and 2012 and was shortlisted for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mainstream Crime and Suspense. She has also been nominated in the Ned Kelly and Sisters in Crime Awards. Helene’s last novel, Safe Harbour, was voted Australia’s 2014 Favourite Romantic Suspense Novel. This is the fourth time Helene’s stories have won the award.
A motivational speaker and writing mentor, Helene lives aboard a catamaran on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef and she plans one day to sail around the world in it.

Northern Heat is Helene’s sixth novel, my review can be seen HERE but first, please read on to learn more about this great novel and find out how you can enter the draw the WIN a copy.

In steamy northern Queensland, Conor is rebuilding his shattered life. Working at Cooktown’s youth centre has given him the chance to make a difference again, and the opportunity to flirt with Dr Kristy Dark. The local GP is hiding her own secrets and struggling to raise her feisty teenage daughter alone.
When a severe cyclone menaces the coast, threatening to destroy everything in its path, tensions come to a head – and the weather is not the only danger. Cut off from the world and with her life on the line, Kristy will have to summon her courage and place her trust in Conor, or they’ll both lose someone they love.

Introducing Northern Heat

I’ll be visiting some of my favourite blogs over the next four weeks to share the experiences that have gone into writing Northern Heat, along with writing advice and some ‘behind the scenes aboard Roobinesque’ posts. At the bottom of this post is a schedule for the blog hop and details of the giveaways and how to enter. I hope you and your readers will join me for the month.

Northern Heat is a very special book for me. It started in 2012 when I ran a writing workshop in Cooktown and met some extraordinarily talented writers. The workshop was held in the Police Citizen Youth Club and the policeman in charge of the centre very generously gave me a tour of the facilities and talked about the challenges of policing in rural and regional areas. Capt G and I spent the weekend in Cooktown chatting to locals, wandering around the markets and having a yarn in a couple of the pubs. We’d been to Cooktown several times before, but always to visit friends so we hadn’t really explored the district before.

In its heyday Cooktown was the centre of one of Australia’s largest gold rushes. That rich and diverse history has left its mark side-by-side with the relics from Capt Cook’s Endeavour, which was careened there on 16th June 1770 after hitting a reef to the south. Aboriginal culture is strong in the district with the settlement of Hopetown to the north. The whole area is full of memorable characters.

On the six-hour drive back to Cairns the story started to take shape, but it would be another two years before I finally sat down to write it. The main character, Conor, was a man in need of redemption. He’d made some mistakes, paid a terrible price and now deserved to move on with his life, wiser, more circumspect but still grieving.

Dr Kristy and her daughter, Abby, came as a family. I’ve watched girls in our circle of family and friends struggle with the surge of hormones as they enter their teens. Abby was sweet but feisty from the very start. Dealing with her family tragedy whilst trying to match-make on her mother’s behalf made her beguiling. I loved telling her story. I’ve have friends who are single mums struggle to be all things to their children, and still having to pursue careers to pay the bills. It was important to me to show the very human side of Kristy as she anguishes about her weight, her parenting ability, her single mum status, all the while she’s recovering from her own tragic loss and the fallout of domestic violence.

Freya, a character Kristy is trying to help, is trapped in a violent marriage. The research into domestic violence was heartbreaking. So many women shared their experiences and the thing that struck me most was that, even if they’d rebuilt their lives, in many cases guilt still held them back. I hope I’ve done their stories justice.

I hope you enjoy Northern Heat and maybe find time to visit North Queensland on your next holiday (I can’t resist a little bit of tourism marketing!)

Do you have a favourite place you loved to revisit in stories? We’d love to hear about it! Comment to go into the draw for the giveaways and thanks for dropping by.

Blog Tour Giveaway

To celebrate the release of my sixth book I have six prize packs to give away. Four of them are duos of SAFE HARBOUR and NORTHERN HEAT and one major prize is a complete set of my six books. For international readers there is a duo of e-books to be won.
To enter leave a comment here or share the post and/or the trailer on social media sites and I’ll double your chances!

Hope to see you through May at the following blogs.

5th May: https://bookdout.wordpress.com
7th May: http://auslit.net
10th May: http://deannasworld1.blogspot.com.au
12th May: http://www.jennjmcleod.com
14th May: http://ausromtoday.com
17th May: https://1girl2manybooks.wordpress.com
19th May: http://writenotereviews.com
21st May: https://australianbookshelf.wordpress.com
24th May: https://nevendbookshelf.wordpress.com/category/reviews/
26th May: http://teddyree-theeclecticreader.blogspot.com.au
28th May: http://australianruralromance.com
31st May: http://talkingbooksblog.net
2nd June: Wrap up and announce the winner on my blog-
http://www.heleneyoung.com

Northern Heat is available to purchase from

Penguin I I Booktopia I via Booko

Amazon AU  I Amazon US

and all good bookstores.