Novelist follows rhythm of country heartbeat

Born and bred on the land, she is deeply attracted to rural life. It is the reason she can immerse herself in the settings of her novels, almost as though she is another character.

Rural romance has become a genre in itself since Tricia started writing, and it is one in which she has found success.

She said that despite it being a historical saga, there was romance in Heart of the Country, between the characters and in the setting of country Australia.

The book starts in SA in 1894, when horses and carts transported English migrants throughout the countryside in search of copper and pastoral land, and the harsh elements of the outback took the newcomers by surprise.

After a run-in with an ex-convict and an encounter with a farmer's daughter which sends his heart aflutter, young Thomas Baker finds himself overseeing a sheep property and having his strength tested by a land like no other.

Tricia grew up on a farm at Butler Tanks, inland from Port Neil on the Eyre Peninsula. She attended Mount Hill Rural School, then Tumby Bay Area School before joining a boarding school in Adelaide.

It was during her studies at Teachers College that her husband Daryl, Tumby Bay, proposed.

"Daryl was working for Australia Post in Alice Springs at the time and so I applied to the Commonwealth Teaching Service to go up there too, but at the last minute he was sent to Port Lincoln" Tricia said.

"I was a permanent teacher and resigned when our first child Kelly was born in 1981.

"We had two more children, Dylan and Jared, and I did some contract and relief teaching after that.

"I heard about a permanent job going at Moonta Area School for a teacher-librarian and Daryl was working away a lot at that stage, leaving me home on my own with three small kids so we decided to have a sea change - to the other side of the gulf."

Initially, the Stringers lived at Kadina and then Wallaroo, and ultimately, Tricia spent 25 years working at Moonta Area School.

She completed a Diploma in Children's Writing in 2000 and went on to hone her writing skills, creating short historical stories for local children.

She self-published three rural romance novels but it was her first book published by Harlequin Australia which placed her on the road to success.

"The publishing of Queen of the Road in December 2012 was the result of being in the right place at the right time," Tricia said.

"I got my manuscript in right when Harlequin was looking for an Australian voice."

Queen of the Road won Romance Writers of Australia's Romantic Book of the Year for 2013 and was one of 50 'Books You Can't Put Down' in the 2013 Get Reading campaign.

Tricia was immediately offered a two-book contract by Harlequin, for Right as Rain and Riverboat Point.

In 2014, she decided to retire from Moonta Area School and be a full-time writer.

"Harlequin offered me a four-book contract, one of which was Heart of the Country, which I had started working on, but it still meant three more," she said.

"I went back for a term that year but it was a struggle and I realised I was at a crossroad."

It was not the pressure of fulfilling the contracts but the flood of ideas and need to be getting them down that played on Tricia's mind.

She is enjoying her chosen path.

"I love writing about rural life more than anything," Tricia said

"With my first self-published book, Changing Channels, I thought about how I can get this idea of rural Australia to city people and depict true daily life in the country.

"So I invented this city girl who marries a farmer and everything that happens is seen through her eyes, that's how I tell the story of her living on the land.

"A lot of my main characters have come from a city environment and some how ended up in the country.

"Both city and country people seem to like that.

"City people have a love affair for the country and I think that is why rural romance is doing well because it is bringing that outback to them and there is a romance to the story."

Heart of the Country was launched on Tuesday and will be available in bookstores tomorrow, May 1, retailing at $29.99.

Tricia is currently touring regional SA, passing through Yorketown, Orroroo, Morgan, Barmera, Lock, Kimba, Port Augusta, Kadina and Adelaide.

She will also tour rural Vic and NSW at the end of May.