Books Spark Joy with Wendy Lee Davies

19 July

This week's Books Spark Joy post is a Q&A with award-winning Romance Author Wendy Lee Davies.

Wendy began writing romances as a lark after leaving her communications and editing job of many years. Wendy won the Romance Writers of Australia Emerald Award in 2017 with her small-town contemporary romance, The Drover’s Rest. The same story (renamed Good Enough For Love prior to publication), was also a finalist in the 2017 Mid-American Romance Writer’s Fiction from the Heartland competition.

Let's get chatting!

Where do you keep your books? Most of my books are on my Kindle. I do have a [very] small bookshelf with some of my favourite, and precious, print books.

Do you hoard or pass your books along? No. I just keep them.

How do you feel about lending books? It’s virtually impossible to lend books on my Kindle, but I recommend stories I love to other friends and writers to read. I’m also an active member of my local library, so lending books is a wonderful way of sharing great fiction.

How does your bookshelf tell the story of your life? It doesn’t, really. And the electronic bookshelf on my Kindle is definitely not a representation of my whole life, just a part of it. The part where I’m both researching and enjoying numerous romantic stories from a variety of genres, not just the small-town, country romance genre that is where I write.

How do you organize your books? Yes, I do. I try to keep all the similar genres together. But I don’t do more than that.

Are you a print or digital reader? Digital. Have been almost from the start.

Do you write surrounded by books? Yes and no. I usually have my Kindle by my side, but that isn’t technically “surrounded by books”, is it?

Do you read while you’re working on a book and if so what do you read? Yes, I do. All the time.

Is there a book that immediately sparks joy in you when you hold it?The one story that always bring a smile is Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery, famous for her dragons and their riders set on the fictional world of Pern. This and was the first of the series I read. My copy is dog-eared and looking a lot worse for wear because I’ve read it so many times. It’s a love story. It’s a science fiction story. And it has dragons in it. Cross-genre much? But this story always makes me smile.