When I was about seven I defaced the inside back cover of a picture book by writing my first story. I don’t remember much about it, except that it featured the Nativity. Instead of getting me into trouble, my act of vandalism gave me unexpected celebrity with my (usually distant) father. He said it should be printed out and sent in to the Catholic Weekly. Receiving that praise was the start of my lifelong ambition to be published in fiction.

Last year a good writer friend, Cathleen Ross, did a spontaneous psychic reading for me. She said my “guides” had just one message: I needed a good kick up the backside as I should have been submitting my work to publishers. As I’d once had a reading by an Indian psychic in Agra near the Taj Mahal, I was dubious. That psychic hadn’t picked me as a writer. Nevertheless, I listened to Cathleen. She suggested I approach Kate Cuthbert of Escape Publishing (the Australian digital arm of Harlequin) with one of my romance novels, a story that had been a finalist in the Clendon Award some years ago. After seeing the first three chapters, Kate requested the whole manuscript. A couple of weeks ago, she sent me an offer of publication.

This is it. My lifetime ambition is about to be realised, after years of rejections and near misses, and all the self-doubt and frustrations any aspiring author will know only too well.

While I’ve shared this news already to family, close friends and the Australian Women Writers team, I wanted to organise a few things before I went public with my news. The first thing I needed to do was to settle on a pen-name. (Anyone who has pronounced my surname, Lhuede, as “lewd” will understand why this isn’t a great name for romance.)

So I’ll be publishing under the name Lizzy Chandler.

Chandler is a family name that I’ve been able to trace back to the late eighteenth-century in Gloucestershire, UK. My great-, great-, great-, great-, great-grandmother was Sarah Chandler, on my mother’s side. Elizabeth is also a family name that goes back many generations, and my darling grandmother was always known as Lizzy, so I love my new name (and it’s much easier to spell).

If you’re a friend, family or writing acquaintance, if you participate in the Australian Women Writers challenge, and if you love a good story with romance and suspense, I hope you’ll like my Lizzy Chandler Facebook page, find me on Twitter @Lizzy_Chandler, and follow my new Lizzy Chandler blog. I’ll keep you posted when my book is out. It’ll  be available in digital format (ebook) all around the world.

In the meantime, I want to share this photo of the countryside that inspired my story, Her Man From Snowy River Country. It’s a cabin where we stay from time to time. I’ll keep the incredible tale of what happened when I was down there researching this story for another time.

Special thanks to my family and friends, the team and participants of the Australian Women Writers Challenge, and Kate at Escape Publishing. I’m thrilled that I’ll be a published author after all this time.

Photo by Rodney Weidland (used with permission)