Lily Malone is a journalist and freelance writer who discovered, after years of writing facts for a living, that writing romance is much more fun.

She wrote His Brand of Beautiful after the birth of her second son, taking inspiration from the once-in-a-century-floods that filled Lake Eyre in outback South Australia in the summer of 2010-11.

Lily juggles writing with the needs of a young family, and when she isn't writing, she likes gardening, walking, wine, and walking in gardens (sometimes with wine).

Alissa Callen is a country girl happiest living far from the city fringe. She draws inspiration from the countryside around her and from the resilience of local bush communities.

Once a teacher and a counsellor, she remains interested in the life journeys that people take. Alissa lives with her family on a small slice of rural Australia in Dubbo NSW.

Penelope Janu writes romances about clever and adventurous women who don't mean to fall in love, but do. She sees the humour in developing relationships and human interactions, even when it might not be obvious to her characters.

Penelope's novels, whether coastal or rural, celebrate Australian communities. Penelope is a lawyer with an interest in social justice issues and the environment. She, like her characters, is up for any adventure, even though she has a terrible sense of direction.

She has six children, big dogs, a distracting husband and never enough time to write. She hopes readers will fall as passionately in love with her heroines and heroes as she invariably does.

Stella Quinn has had a love affair with books since she first discovered the alphabet. She lives in sunny Queensland now, but has lived in England, Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea. Boarding school in a Queensland country town left Stella with a love of small towns and heritage buildings (and a fear of chenille bedspreads and meatloaf!) and that is why she loves writing rural romance.

Stella is a keen scrabble player, she's very partial to her four kids and anything with four furry feet, and she is a mediocre grower of orchids. An active member of Romance Writers of Australia, Stella has won their Emerald, Sapphire and Valerie Parv Awards, and finaled in their R*BY Romantic Book of the Year award. You can find and follow Stella Quinn via her website.

Pamela Cook is a city girl with a country lifestyle and too many horses. Her rural fiction novels feature feisty women, tangled family relationships and a healthy dose of romance.

Her first novel, Blackwattle Lake, was published in 2012 after being selected for the Queensland Writers' Centre/Hachette Manuscript Development Program. Blackwattle Lake was followed by Essie's Way (2013) and Close To Home (2015) and her fourth book, The Crossroads, is due for release in December 2016.

An eclectic reader, Pamela also enjoys writing poetry, memoir pieces and literary fiction and is proud to be a Writer Ambassador for Room to Read, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes literacy and gender equality in developing countries. When she's not writing she wastes as much time as possible riding her handsome quarter horse, Morocco.