Read a Q&A with Fleur McDonald | Rising Dust

Fleur McDonald has lived and worked on farms for much of her life. After growing up in the small town of Orroroo in South Australia, she became a jillaroo before spending twenty years farming 8000 acres, east of Esperance, WA. She is the best-selling author of Red Dust, Blue Skies, Purple Roads, Silver Clouds, Crimson Dawn, Emerald Springs, Indigo Storm, Sapphire Falls, The Missing Pieces of Us, Suddenly One Summer, Fool’s Gold, Where the Rivers Run, Without a Doubt, Starting From Now, Red Dirt Country, The Shearer’s Wife, Something to Hide, and Deception Creek as well as the ebook exclusives If You Were Here and A Farmer’s Choice. Fleur currently lives in Esperance with her two children, an energetic kelpie and a Jack Russell terrier.

Today, to celebrate the recent release of her rural suspense novel Rising Dust, Fleur is on the blog to answer a few of our questions! Read on …

Fleur McDonald

Please tell us about your book, Rising Dust!

FM: Well, it’s the fifth in the early Detective Dave Burrows series. Dave and his partner Bob Holden have been sent north of Carnarvon in the north of WA to investigate sheep stealing. However, during their initial investigations, they are rained in at a station stay by a ferocious storm. This storm uncovers something that neither of them expected and puts them in danger from people they can’t see.

Where did the inspiration for this book come from?

FM: Last year during the lock out that WA had, I decided the only way I was going to get a holiday was to take off and go north. I could use it as both a break and a research trip. So, I went through the Gascoyne and Pilbara, immersing myself in the scenery, the atmosphere, talking to other travellers and generally trying to understand how the country works up there. That was the setting.

I also had read a news article about a boat that had washed ashore with no one in it, and that really piqued my curiosity. It took a while, but I worked out how I could use that boat and here we have Rising Dust!

This is another Detective Dave Barrows novel. What’s your favourite thing about writing this series?

FM: I love writing Dave. He’s been around so long; I feel like he’s a real person and a real friend. In this series I get to explore crimes that perhaps I wouldn’t in the contemporary rural fiction novels, and I love the way that I get to grow Dave from a hot head, reactionary type copper to the level headed methodical bloke he is today, albeit someone who still pushes the boundaries for the right outcome.

I also love reading crime books so I feel that writing something about crime is a natural extension.

Dave has to face up to the guilt and trauma left behind by his family tragedy. How did you approach the writing of this aspect of the story?

FM: I talked to my detective mate and we fleshed out how Dave would be feeling after all the extraordinary events that had affected him. Having been through a divorce I also understood the trauma that can cause on both sides, so I drew on some of my own experience there.

Australian weather can be fierce, as shown by the recent floods and bushfires, and the impact of climate change. Was this something you were thinking about when you wrote the tropical storm into the book?

FM: I’m always influenced by what’s going on around me and my thoughts are certainly with those that have been recently impacted. But for this particular storm – I was sitting on the bank of Emu Creek when the blue sky suddenly disappeared in a matter of moments and it started to rain. Now it wasn’t as ferocious as the storm in the novel, but it was enough for me to sit back and take notice and wonder what would happen when the huge tropical storms came in.

I was also camped up next to another older couple and once it had stopped raining, we came out to compare notes. The ground was pretty wet, but the red dirt was incredibly slippery and a couple of us went head over heels on the dirt. I guess that’s where the thought of an airstrip being too slippery to land or take off came into being.

Can you tell us a little bit about your journey towards becoming a writer?

FM: My son was little and he’d not long been diagnosed with autism. I was trying to help his attention span by writing little stories about things he knew or understood. And, I guess I’d dabbled in writing from when I was very small, so to write a novel didn’t seem a big stretch. The only thing was what to write about? Then I read Rachael Treasure’s Jillaroo and realised there was a hunger for stories set in the bush. And why not? The outback has always been a plethora of stories, so I chose to tell some of them.

What do you love about writing rural fiction?

FM: Being able to showcase the land, the agricultural industry and why farmers do what they do in a fictional story. Everything to do with the ag industry is real, but the story is fictional so hopefully people never feel like I’m bashing them over the head with information.

What is the last book you read and loved?

FM: The Way it is Now, by Garry Disher.

What do you hope readers will discover in Rising Dust?

FM: A beautiful countryside that people will want to visit and entertainment – a break from this crazy world we’re living in at the moment.

And finally, what’s up next for you?

FM: Editing book 20 and writing Book 21. I’ve got enough to keep me out of trouble for a while!

Thanks!

—Rising Dust by Fleur McDonald (Allen & Unwin) is out now.

Rising Dust

by Fleur McDonald

After the family's devastating tragedy, Detective Dave Burrows is crystal clear that his wife, Mel, is no longer interested in their marriage.

Before Dave can talk to Mel, he and his partner, Bob Holden, are sent to investigate a suspected sheep stealing at a station north of Carnarvon where they very quickly realise that this crime is a lot more than just stock theft. As a ferocious tropical storm floods the airstrip and uncovers more than anyone expected, Dave and Bob find themselves isolated, outnumbered and in extraordinary danger. Dave has to...

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