Down Under Showcase Author of the Day

Meet Lisa Henry

Lisa Henry is the author of Sweetwater, When All the World Sleeps, Bliss, King of Dublin and so many others listed below.

To get to know Lisa Henry a little better, she agreed to an interview. Look for the interview below and the Down Under Scavenger Hunt word found somewhere within.

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Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.

Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.

She shares her house with too many cats, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

Contacts/Follow at :
Twitter https://twitter.com/LisaHenryOnline
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5050492.Lisa_Henry
Website http://www.lisahenryonline.com
Blog http://lisahenryonline.blogspot.com.au
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lisa.henry.1441

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Your Books:

 

 

 

 

The Two Gentleman of Altona (Playing the Fool #1), with J.A. Rock
Fall on Your Knees, with J.A Rock – part of the Rated: XXXmas Anthology
Sweetwater
Bliss, with Heidi Belleau
Another Man’s Treasure, with J.A. Rock
When All The World Sleeps, with J.A. Rock
The King of Dublin, with Heidi Belleau

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Cooper versus America (Prescott College #1), with J.A. Rock.
Brandon Mills versus the V-Card (Prescott College #2), with J.A. Rock
The Good Boy (The Boy #1), with J.A. Rock
The Naughty Boy (The Boy #1.5), with J.A. Rock
The Boy Who Belonged (The Boy #2), with J.A. Rock
Dark Space
He Is Worthy
The Island
Tribute
The Dreams You Made in the Dirt – a free short.
Falling Away – a free short.
The Last Rebellion – a free short.

Genre(s):

I write m/m and I can’t really narrow it down any more than that. I’ve written contemporary, historical and sci-fi.

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Contests and Giveaways:

1. Today’s Giveaway (thank you, Lisa Henry) is an eBook copy of Mark Cooper versus America. Enter using this Rafflecopter link here. Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Rafflecopter Link: a Rafflecopter giveaway

2. Down Under Scavenger Hunt – find Lisa Henry’s Hunt “Word” in bold green. Collect all the words from each author and submit the list in writing no later than midnight on February 1st. Make sure you include an email address where you can be reached. Prizes will be given to 5 people selected, from 1st place to 5th! Happy Hunting.

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Hi! I mean, g’day. It’s great to be here at Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words. Today I’m offering an ebook copy of Mark Cooper versus America, a book I co-wrote with the awesome J.A. Rock, to one lucky commenter! Weirdly, I think it’s the most Australian of my books, even though it’s set in Pennsylvania and has snow and bears in it. I mean, we have snow here too, allegedly. I’ve only seen it once though.

Also today, I’m sharing a recipe with you. It’s simple enough that even I can follow it, I promise. The recipe is for Anzac biscuits, and no, you can’t call them cookies. Anzac biscuits are a century old this year. They are named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, called the ANZACs, and were the biscuits of choice for families sending gift packages overseas to the troops during the First World War because, being egg-free, they wouldn’t spoil.

Anzac Biscuits Recipe

Here is what you need:

125g butter, chopped coarsely
2 tablespoons golden syrup – you can substitute with treacle
¾ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon water
1 cup (90g) rolled oats
1 cup (90g) desiccated coconut
1 cup (150g) plain flour
¾ cup (165g) brown sugar
And this is what you do:

Preheat oven to 160° Celsius or 140° Celsius fan-forced. That’s 320° Fahrenheit or 285° Fahrenheit fan-forced.

Combine butter and syrup in a small saucepan. Heat gently until butter and syrup melt.

Combine bicarbonate of soda and water in a small bowl and stir into butter mixture.

Combine remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Pour over warm butter mixture and stir well to combine.

Roll rounded teaspoons of mixture into balls. Place about 4 cm apart on baking paper lined baking trays and flatten slightly.

Bake in preheated oven 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and cool 5 minutes on baking trays; transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

They’re yummy! Enjoy! And now onto some questions:

Were you a reader as a child?

Absolutely. I spent several years in Papua New Guinea as a child, and we had no television there. I’m sure that has a lot to do with my very early love of reading – having no other options. We had movies some weeks at the local club, but our main entertainment was reading and storytelling. There was also no bookshop in the town we lived, so my mum encouraged my sister and me to make up our own stories. Some of the first stories I “wrote” were written down by my mum because I hadn’t learned to write yet.

Title or characters or plot? Which comes first?

Characters, always. Everything else comes after I figure out who my main players are, and what their dynamic is, because that’s always going to be the heart of any story that I write. It doesn’t matter if it’s set in the future in space or in nineteenth century Wyoming (I’ve written both!), the characters are always the first thing I focus on and I build everything else around them.

Do you have a favorite character that you have written?

That’s a hard one! I think maybe Brady from Dark Space. It was so much fun to write in his voice, and be in his head. He’s sarcastic, and defiant, and always gets in trouble because he just can’t shut his mouth, but it’s mostly just a front because he’s so scared of being stuck in space where he knows he’s going to die. And I think I really love Brady so much because I was so worried that readers would hate him—a lot of times he’s selfish and immature and says hurtful things to the few people who care about him—but most readers love him too, which was fantastic. It’s totally a secret of mine that both Brady and Cam are also Aussie characters, even if it’s from an unrecogniSable future Australia. I think probably the only think that gives it away is that Brady mentions cockatoos. Otherwise, it could be anywhere.

Having said that, I’ve also got a total soft spot for Mark Cooper, from Mark Cooper versus America, for being a proud Aussie boy at an American college and refusing to give into peer pressure and use the word “ass”. Mark is fighting the good fight! Mark was written specifically because J.A. Rock and I spent so much time arguing about Australian English (which we all know is correct) and American English (which makes no sense and is wrong). So that gave me a chance to address most of my issues with American English, and will hopefully help explain to Americans why we giggle when you ask us which team we root for. Root does not mean what you think it means.

If you were a tour guide, what would you like a visitor to see and what impression would you want them to take away with them when they leave?

I was actually a bit of a tour guide last year when J.A. Rock came to visit. I made it my mission to take her to a wildlife sanctuary so she could see crocodiles, cassowaries, koalas, dingoes, wombats and the whole shebang. We were mobbed by kangaroos, and saw one of them punch a duck. It was hilarious.

So, the wildlife, definitely. Everyone should pet a wombat and hold a koala at least once in their lives. And see a duck get punched by a kangaroo.