Meet 11 of South Australia’s top romance writers with a global fan base
Montana Fyre started writing ‘spicy’ storylines for fun but as romance novels boom around the world, her fan base ballooned - and now she’s even quit her day job.
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For Adelaide-based indie author Montana Fyre, writing romance was initially a fun hobby she did for her eyes only.
A light reprieve in the evenings and weekends from her work in the government sector in South Australia.
But just before she married her husband, she decided to self-publish. Her first book, Wager, went gangbuster and since then she’s become an Amazon top 50 best-selling dark romance author.
The 30-year-old from Evanston South tells SA Weekend: “I’ve always loved writing, and early on in my relationship with my husband, which was like 11 years ago, I started this book and at the time I never intended for it to ever be published.
“And then I finished the book just after our wedding, and I was like, ‘You know what? I think I might publish this next year’ … it kind of took off from there.”
She has now gained a large online following, with more than 18,000 followers on Instagram and a dedicated group of almost 300 fans on Facebook affectionately named Montana’s Fyreflies.
Now writing full time, she credits her ability to write romance to her “fairytale love story” with husband, Sam, who does the graphic design for her books.
“It’s really exciting having people getting so excited about the characters that have lived in my head for so long now that they’re finally out in the world, and being so passionate about them,” Fyre says.
Fyre is not alone in growing a global fanbase from writing at her home in South Australia, especially with romance novels currently booming in popularity.
In 2023, the genre pulled in a whopping $1.44bn globally and SA has a large number of writers who are adored by romance readers around the world.
The rising love of romance books comes hand-in-hand with the explosion of ”spicy” novel recommendations on social media, specifically on TikTok and Instagram.
Like a virtual book club, users share reviews of their latest reads, with videos with the hashtags #BookTok, #Bookstagram and #Spicybookclub being watched just over 230 billion times worldwide.
Here SA Weekend hand-picks the top 11 writers from around South Australia who are well versed in the art of spicy storylines.
Leonie Kelsall (Laney Kaye)
●Lives: Pallamana, near Monarto
●Spiciness rating: 1 as Leonie Kelsall, 5 as Laney Kaye
●Instagram: @leonie_kelsall_author
Kelsall grew up in a tiny town on the Fleurieu Peninsula where she went to school with 10 other students, and moved later to a sheep and wheat farm in the South Australian Murraylands.
After working in Adelaide at the Education Department and the History Trust, she headed back to the country where she writes books, bakes, makes jam and preserves, and looks after her animals, as well as working as a professional counsellor in the Adelaide Hills.
Leonie writes Australian rural romance and her books include The Blue Gum Camp, that opens with Charity meeting confirmed divorcee Lachlan at a wild Bachelors and Spinsters Ball.
Kelsall has written five rural romances with a sixth due this month, The Homestead in the Eucalypts, about a student doctor who retreats to her grandparents’ farm in rural South Australia.
Kelsall also writes for a US publisher under the pseudonym Laney Kaye where she lets her spicier side loose in titles like Hawaiian Taboo and Malicious Desire.
Susanne Panagaris (Susanne Hampton)
●Lives: Adelaide
●Spiciness rating: 0
●Instagram: @susannelovesshoes
Panagaris is a government official supporting the First Nations Business Sector by day, and by night she is a Mills & Boon author who writes medical romance.
Her love of a happy ending was discovered in a cinema in the 1970s as she sobbed her way through The Way We Were. “From that afternoon, I was hooked on romantic storylines,” she says.
After years of being a romance reader, she took a freelance-writing course and drafted her first manuscript which she mailed – tied with a pink bow – to Mills & Boon. After an encouraging rejection letter, she attended Romance Writers of Australia conferences where she was supported by fellow romanticists. Many submissions later, she got the call from the UK, and the dream three-book deal.
Her 11 books have been published in 17 countries and she is working on her 12th. “My books are sensual, not racy, they are ‘closed bedroom door’ leaving the details to the reader’s imagination,” she says.
Darry Fraser
●Lives: Fleurieu Peninsula
●Spiciness rating: 1
●Instagram: @darryfraserauthor
Fraser, who spent her childhood years on the River Murray in Victoria, is known for her historical romance stories with complex love interests and sizzling chemistry. Now living and working on the Fleurieu Peninsula, again close to the River Murray, she leans into history and plot – but if her characters end up together, she is very happy with that.
Her women are strong and independent and her plot lines are often against the background of Australian history, including her forthcoming The Night on the Darling River, out in December, which is set during the devastating 1894 shearers’ strike.
Her previous book, The Milliner of Bendigo, about Evie Emerson who has “trouble with the law, a missing sister, and a growing attachment to the wrong man” came out last year and was her most successful to date. She creates powerful connections between the settings of her books and her character’s lives and is driven by history, with romance along the way.
Amy T Matthews (Amy Barry)
●Lives: Adelaide
●Spiciness rating: From 1 to 4
●Instagram: @amytmatthews_author
Mathews has a PhD in creative writing and writes literary fiction and romance fiction under other names. “I love romance and it’s so much fun to write – it’s my happy place,” she says.
She started out with four books in the US under the name Tess LeSue then moved into historical rom coms under Amy Barry.
The McBrides of Montana series expresses her enduring love affair with popular romance with a historical fiction component. She is not afraid of writing sexy scenes but it depends on the book. Kit McBride Gets a Wife, set in 19th century Montana and written under Amy Barry, leaves the bedroom scenes behind closed doors, as do her Amy T.
Matthews books such as Someone Else’s Bucket List, published last year. But her Tess LeSue books were much spicier. “The characters tend to drive the spiciness,” she says.
Expect feel-good endings in most of her books because Matthews believes in the magic of falling in love but knows that lasting relationships involve a lot more, like respect, honesty and mutuality.
“But that doesn’t mean it’s not sexy, swoony, and all the good melty feelings too,” she says. “I think the satisfaction of romance (for me) is in the characters both giving and receiving all of those things.”
Matthews will play a prominent role in the August Romance Writers of Australia annual conference at Glenelg where publishers, editors and agents gather and writers have the chance to pitch their books to publishers and agents.
Clare Connelly
●Lives: Adelaide
●Spiciness rating: 4
●Instagram: @finishthatdamnbook
Connelly grew up reading romance, often up a tree with Mills & Boon in hand, and wrote her first Mills & Boon offering when she was 15.
After years of rejection she self-published and became one of the top-selling authors on Amazon. From there, her career snowballed; she signed a contract with Mills & Boon and has written more than 45 books for Harlequin.
“Being an avid reader is key to becoming a strong writer – I’m drawn to human emotion and the complexity of love,” she says. Her books are sexy, but with an emotional context. She writes about love first and foremost and her couples become intimate when it feels organic and right.
And while she is comfortable writing about sex, she says her bedroom scenes are tame compared to other books she has come across.
“There’s really something for everyone in the romance market,” she says. Her books often feature a love story around an alpha male, even though she is happily married to ‘the loveliest man that ever lived’.
“There’s something about a brooding, overconfident hero in a romance novel. Perhaps it’s that they always find out, at some point, they’re not as self-contained as they’d like to think,” she says.
Connelly lives near the sea in Adelaide and has a flourishing international career in writing about love and romance.
“The best thing about writing for a publishing powerhouse like Mills & Boon is that they have a huge international reach. I’m published in more countries than I can remember! Even before writing for Mills & Boon, my biggest markets were the UK, the US and Germany,” she says.
Cheryl Adnams
●Lives: Fleurieu Peninsula
●Spiciness rating: 3
●Instagram: @cheryladnams_author
Adnams’ Muller’s of McLaren Vale series could not be more proudly South Australian as love unfolds among the vineyards of the Fleurieu.
The trilogy began with Bet On It, a sizzling rural romance involving one girl and three brothers; followed by Chasing the Flames in which an old crush is reignited one New Year’s Eve, only for his ex to return; and Handpicked with its storyline, “He who falls last, falls twice as hard. Has the last bachelor of Muller’s Field met his match?”
Adnams has been writing all her life but was not published until she was in her 40s. She writes historical romance as well as rural love stories and her sex scenes sometimes unfold with the door ajar.
She has lived and worked in the United States and Canada, and spent two years working for a European tour company but her favourite writing retreat is her home on South Australia’s southern coast.
Fiona McIntosh
● Lives: Riverton
● Spiciness rating: 3
● Instagram: @fionamcintoshbooks
F Fiona McIntosh started a travel magazine out of Adelaide, then 15 years later followed a dream and wrote a book. It was picked up by a global publisher and became the first of a trilogy. McIntosh, who runs masterclasses for aspiring writers, was mentored by the late Bryce Courtenay, who she met in Tasmania. “He gave me the confidence to believe in myself,” McIntosh says. “He made it all seem so easy.”
McIntosh can write a book in two months but devotes longer to researching eras and places that bring her romances alive, from Hitler-era Germany to post-war Paris and Sydney’s underworld. She has been writing for only a decade but has published 45 books and is working on her 46th, and says she tries to make each book better than the last by pushing boundaries with the storyline.
Her themes are love stories in historical settings and include The Fallen Woman about a botanical artist, Jane, who is banished to the countryside where she crosses paths with Guy Attwood, heir to a fortune.
The Sugar Palace is set in Sydney and follows Grace Fairweather who works in her father’s grocery shop and starts making her own confectionery when a rakish Londoner comes into her life.
The English-born author of adult and children’s books was born in Brighton, UK, and moved to Australia in her late teens. She also writes a strand of crime fiction featuring Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth.
Carla Caruso
●Lives: Adelaide
●Spiciness rating: 3.5
●Instagram: @carlacaruso_creative
Before she could write, Caruso dictated detailed stories to her teachers to transcribe. Writing was always in her stars but journalism was a safer career option at the start. She fell into romance writing with her first submitted manuscript, Cityglitter, about a young Sydney socialite, Christie, who has a sizzling connection with her new boss, Jasper.
Apart from juggling that, Christie has another secret – she is part fairy. “It’s funny because I’m not a fantasy reader, aside from devouring Twilight back in the day. But somehow I’ve written a few books with urban fantasy elements, like Cityglitter and The Christmas Witch,” she says.
Caruso doesn’t stray too much into raciness but usually includes one or two open-door scenes when it feels right and realistic. Her most recent book, The Right Place, leans into her Italian background with the story of Italian woman, Nella, who reluctantly inherits a market garden on Marion Road next door to a surly neighbour, Adrian Tomaso.
Meredith Appleyard
●Lives: Clare Valley
●Spiciness rating: 0
●Instagram: No
Books were always part of Appleyard’s life as were small country towns. She grew up in the Murray Mallee and says her heart will always be in the country.
“When I’m not physically there, I yearn to return,” she says. A self-taught writer who knew nothing of the craft when she started out, Appleyard attended workshops, joined a writers’ group and studied writing at the Adelaide Centre for Arts.
Her first success was a short story, Waiting for Harry, which won a place in the annual anthology of the Romance Writers of Australia Little Gems competition, and in 2015, The Country Practice was published.
She is now at book number nine with The Seachangers, about an older woman who returns to her home town where a local cafe owner catches her eye, out in September. Her books are all about the romance and not what comes after.
“My ongoing fascination with the complexities of small country communities, the characters I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had, are all reflected in my novels,” she says.
Emily Forbes
●Location: Adelaide
●Spiciness rating: 4.5
●Instagram: @EmilyForbesAuthor
Forbes is high up among South Australia’s most successful romance novelists with two million books sold in dozens of countries, many in translation.
She has written about 40 books and in 2013 won an Australia Romantic Book of the Year award for her novel Sydney Harbour Hospital: Bella’s Wishlist.
She specialises in medical romance and writes for Harlequin Mills & Boon. Medical romance became her writing niche because these were the books she most enjoyed reading.
“I like a dose of reality with my escapism. Medical romances can take us from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. We can laugh and cry,” she says.
Forbes says the medical elements lend depth to her stories which feature strong and independent career women who do not need a man to complete them, but … With her 40th book, Pregnancy Surprise in Byron Bay, due out this month, readers have come to know what to expect.
Not all are set in South Australia but in The Firefighter’s Second Chance, a paramedic who has sworn off love may be persuaded otherwise when firefighters arrive to deal with summer bushfires in the Adelaide Hills.
Forbes’s book, Ali and the Rebel Doc, is a finalist in this year’s Australia Romantic Book of the Year awards with the winner to be announced at the Adelaide Romance Writers of Australia conference at Glenelg in August.
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