There’s no place like home: Love letter to small-town life wins coveted RUBY Award
Proving that romance is alive and well, Warwick-based author Susan Mackie has had a big win at the RUBY Awards.
The Southern Downs is celebrating one of its own, with local author Susan Mackie winning the 2025 RUBY Award for Romantic Elements/Women’s Fiction at the Romantic Writers of Australia Conference.
The Romantic Book of the Year (RUBY) Awards are presented annually by the Romantic Writers of Australia. They are the premier awards recognising excellence in romance writing across multiple categories, judged by both readers and industry professionals.
This national recognition highlights not only Mackie’s gift for weaving heartfelt, compelling stories but also the creative excellence flourishing in regional Queensland.
“I’ve been dreaming of writing books since I was eight years old,” says Mackie. “To be recognised at this level is such an honour and a reminder that stories written in small country towns can resonate far beyond our own backyard.”
a love letter to the community, brimming with the quirks, dramas and joys of small-town life
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Mackie’s most-loved work is the Barrington Series – a love letter to the community, brimming with the quirks, dramas and joys of small-town life. For readers who have lived in regional communities, the stories feel like home. For those in the city, the Barrington books offer the opportunity to step into a world where neighbours know your name, friendships run deep and life’s challenges are shared. It’s no surprise that fans eagerly await each new release, becoming deeply invested in the lives of Barrington’s families and turning each page as though they too are living alongside them.
Mackie says she is thrilled to receive a RUBY Award for The Barrington Book Club, book eight in the series, released in June 2024.
“I’d like to share some details that influenced the story and style,” she says. “I wanted to bring the characters from the earlier books together regularly. Meeting at the pub on Friday night no longer worked for some, as they had children and others were planning babies.
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“Creating a book club for monthly catch-ups seemed a better way to do that. And I wanted to set the story over a one-year period, so that was punctuated by 12 book club meetings. And then I wondered – what would they read at book club? There’d have to be some chit chat at the meetings about their current read.
“Which led me to think about the books I was reading – mostly Australian authors – and wouldn’t it be fun to feature real books by real authors? So I made a list and reached out to (most of) the authors to let them know. Okay, I didn’t check in with Liane Moriarty and Bryan Brown because I was too much of a scaredy-cat. This led to a lot of amazing author-support and many collaborations. Who knew it would be so fabulous?
“Readers influenced one important storyline, too. After seven books, I was receiving a lot of feedback from readers that Barrington was so beautiful, they wanted to move there. While I adore the sentiment, it made me realise that I had created a Utopia, of sorts and, really, life isn’t always like that.
“Enter the ‘tragedy’. There had to be one, to shake the readers (and characters) up a bit. And it had to be someone important, that readers were invested in. This didn’t happen until midway through the book, so the second half was carried by two key elements: How the various characters reacted to the tragedy and moved forward, all differently, and new romance with new characters – a mid-life romance, in fact, that readers tell me they adored.
“I also tried something different from a craft-writerly aspect. Earlier books were written from two points of view – but with a large ensemble-style cast, I chose to expand to eight points of view. I was terrified it wouldn’t work, yet here we are.”
Mackie published her debut novel, Charlie’s Will, in 2020. The book quickly rose to number one in its genre on Amazon, launching her career as a respected independent author.
Beyond her novels, Mackie is the publisher of the Love in a Sunburnt Land Anthology series, co-authored with four fellow Australian writers. She also supports the writing community as an editor, publishing mentor and engaging speaker at festivals, libraries and conferences across the country.
Now a full-time writer, Mackie lives in a historic late-1800s home in Warwick in the Southern Downs, complete with the bookshelf and ladder she dreamed of as a child. She continues to balance storytelling with mentoring and helping other writers bring their words to life.
As to what’s next – Mackie says she is working on a Barrington novella to release in time for Christmas this year and is also starting a new series, a trilogy, set last century but still in a small town.