Welcome Juanita / Raven!
You write small town romance as Juanita Kees and paranormal mystery as Raven Corbin. What attracted you to these genres?
Small town romance found me before I found it. I grew up in a community where everyone knew everyone, where the local pub was the centre of the universe and gossip travelled faster than the internet ever could. That world never left me. There's a warmth and an intimacy to small town life that I wanted to capture on the page, the idea that love can find you in the most unexpected places when you're not even looking, and that community is its own kind of character.
Raven Corbin, though, she came from a different part of me entirely. I've always been drawn to old buildings and the stories they carry. Walk into a heritage-listed property and you can feel the weight of everything that happened there. I started asking myself, what if someone could actually hear those stories? What if the past wasn't finished with us? The Gothic mystery genre gave me permission to explore that, to write about injustice and forgotten voices and the kind of history that powerful people would prefer stayed buried.
In a way, both pen names are chasing the same thing: the truth of human connection. Juanita Kees finds it in the warmth of community and romantic love. Raven Corbin finds it in the obligation we owe to those who came before us. They're two sides of the same coin.
Is your writing process the same for both genres?
Absolutely not, and I think that's the great joy of writing under two different names. They demand different things from me.
When I sit down to write as Juanita Kees, there's a lightness to the process. I know my characters are going to find their way to each other. The tension comes from the journey, the misunderstandings and the slow burn and the moment when they finally choose each other. I write those books with a smile on my face more often than not.
Raven Corbin is a different creature entirely. The research is heavier, the atmosphere has to be carefully built, and the emotional stakes feel more urgent because they're tied to historical injustice. I find myself sitting with those stories for longer before I write a single word. The characters carry wounds that need to be understood before they can be placed on the page. There's a responsibility there that I feel quite deeply.
What stays the same across both is my absolute commitment to character. Whether I'm writing a small town heroine trying to outrun her past or a woman who discovers she can speak to the dead, I need to know who these people are at their core, what they're running from and what they desperately need, before anything else can happen.
You will be sharing Bitterport Mysteries with other authors. Can you explain how that came about and what each of you will bring to the series?
The Bitterport Mystery series is genuinely one of the most exciting things I've been involved with. It came about through a conversation between myself, S.E. Gilchrist, and Kerrie Paterson, three authors who share a love of Tasmania's extraordinary atmospheric potential and a deep respect for what the state's history has to offer storytelling.
We wanted to create something richer than any of us could do alone. A fictional Tasmanian town with its own history, its own secrets, its own recurring community of characters, written by three different voices but feeling like one cohesive world. We each bring our own strengths to Bitterport, and the result is a series where readers can inhabit the same town through very different lenses. It keeps the world feeling alive and multi-dimensional rather than a single author's vision. I think readers who love Tasmanian settings and mysteries with real emotional depth are going to find something to love in what all three of us are building together.
Are you a plotter? Pantser? Or somewhere in-between?
At heart I'm a pantser, though Raven Corbin has forced me to develop plotting muscles I never knew I needed.
As Juanita Kees, I write the way I think most pantsers do: I know who my people are, I drop them into a situation, and then I follow them around to see what they do. The happily ever after is non-negotiable, but how they get there is very much a discovery. Some of my favourite plot moments in those books arrived as complete surprises to me. The characters simply refused to behave as expected, which is usually a sign that something good is happening.
Raven Corbin requires more scaffolding. With a mystery, the clues need to be planted early, the red herrings need to feel genuine, and the historical elements have to be woven in with care. I do a significant amount of research and structural planning before I write Chapter One. The emotional beats and the character revelations still surprise me, but the bones of the mystery are mapped out before I begin.
I think the honest answer is that I'm a pantser who learned to plot under duress, and I'm not entirely sorry about it. Raven Corbin has made me a better writer across both names.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Write the story only you can tell. That sounds like a cliche until you sit down and really ask yourself what it means. There are thousands of small town romances and hundreds of paranormal mysteries, but there is only one person with your specific combination of experience, obsessions, heartbreaks, and perspective. That's your competitive advantage. Use it.
Read widely, including outside your genre. Some of the most useful things I've learned about pacing and atmosphere came from reading and being edited by a professional editor. Get comfortable with bad first drafts. The first draft is not the book. It's the raw material. Give yourself permission to write badly in order to write at all.
And this one is perhaps the most important: take your characters seriously. Readers can feel when a writer doesn't fully believe in the people they've created. Know your characters' wounds before you know their eye colour. Know what they're running from and what they're running toward. Everything else follows from that.
How do you fill the creative well?
Travel, whenever I can manage it. There is nothing like standing in a place with centuries of history behind it to make stories feel urgent and necessary. Tasmania specifically has been extraordinary for the Raven Corbin work. You walk around some of those heritage sites and the past feels genuinely present.
Long walks with no particular destination. I do a lot of my best plotting on foot, when my conscious mind is occupied with putting one foot in front of the other and my subconscious is quietly working out the knot I couldn't unpick at my desk.
Conversations with other writers, particularly the Bitterport collaborators. There's something about being in conversation with other creative people who take storytelling seriously that recharges something in me.
And honestly? Allowing myself to be bored occasionally. We're so quick to fill every quiet moment now, but some of my best ideas have come from sitting with nothing to do and letting my mind wander.
What is next for you?
As Raven Corbin, the immediate focus is finishing Murder at Millmerran House and getting it into readers' hands for the mid-2026 launch. There are more stories in that world waiting to be told, and Misdeeds at Moorstone Lodge is already taking shape as the next book in the series, bringing a different kind of darkness and a new set of voices to Bitterport.
As Juanita Kees, I have a new small town story simmering that I'm very excited about, one that deals with returning home after a long absence and discovering that the place you ran from might be exactly where you were always meant to be.
And the Bitterport collaboration itself has legs. The three of us have talked about where the series could go, and the possibilities are genuinely thrilling. Bitterport has a lot of secrets left to uncover.
What is your upcoming release and your inspiration behind it?
My upcoming release as Raven Corbin is Murder at Millmerran House, due for release mid-2026 and the first book in the Bitterport Mystery series.
The inspiration for this one began with a question I couldn't stop asking: what happens when a house refuses to let its secrets stay buried? Millmerran House is a grand Victorian mansion in Bitterport with a wartime history that someone, even now, is determined to keep hidden. When London hotelier Aiden Bellingan inherits it, he expects renovation headaches. What he doesn't expect is Elvira Brown, the former resident who disappeared in 1945 and has very definite opinions about what he should do with her home.
I kept asking myself, what would it take to hear those voices now? And the answer that came was: someone who could literally hear them.
Enter interior designer Marielle McGregor, who knows she should turn down the project. Millmerran House has a troubled history with her family, and her father recently went missing while researching the mansion's secrets. But there's something about the house and its charming new owner that makes walking away impossible. What unfolds is a mystery woven through with wartime secrets, family feuds, and a conspiracy that someone is still willing to kill to protect. Elvira, it turns out, is a surprisingly helpful ghost when she chooses to be.
The book is about inheritance in every sense of the word: the properties we acquire, the histories we stumble into, and the things passed down to us whether we wanted them or not. It's also, at its heart, a romance between two people who find each other in the middle of chaos and chandeliers and a ghost with strong opinions. Perfect for readers who love Victoria Laurie, Juliet Blackwell, and Sofie Kelly.
Bitterport as a setting gave me so much to work with. There's something about Tasmania's atmosphere, the old buildings, the sense that the past is never quite finished with you, that makes it the perfect home for a series like this. I can't wait to share Millmerran House with readers.
Juanita Kees writes small town contemporary romance. Raven Corbin writes Gothic paranormal mystery.
Murder at Millmerran House is the first book in the Bitterport Mystery series, due for release mid-2026.
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Trading the city's noise for the warmth of a small-town celebration, Bonny finds herself captivated by weddings, winter festivities, and the undeniable pull of attraction to Adam McGuigan, the farmer from Yarraman Downs.
Juanita Kees
Juanita graduated from the Australian College QED, Bondi with a diploma in Proofreading, Editing and Publishing, and achieved her dream of becoming a published author in 2012 with the release of her debut romantic suspense, Fly Away Peta (recently re-released as Under Shadow of Doubt).
Under the Hood followed in 2013 as one of the first releases from Harlequin's digital pioneer, Escape Publishing.
In 2014 Juanita was nominated for the Lynn Wilding (Romance Writers of Australia) Volunteer Award, and was a finalist in the Romance Writers Australia Romantic Book of the Year and the Australian Romance Readers Awards in 2014 and 2016. Her rural romances have made the Amazon bestseller and top 100 lists. Juanita writes mostly contemporary and rural romantic suspense but also likes to dabble in the ponds of Paranormal with Greek gods brought to life in the 21st century.
She escapes the real world to write stories starring spirited heroines who give the hero a run for his money before giving in. When she’s not writing, Juanita is mother to three boys and a Daschund named Sam, and has a passion for fast cars and country living.
Find Juanita at: juanitakees.com.
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Raven Corbin
Some authors find inspiration in coffee shops or quiet libraries. Raven Corbin found hers in moonlit cemeteries and the whispered legends of abandoned towns.
Growing up on family vacations that other children might have found terrifying, Raven was enchanted by crumbling headstones, forgotten settlements, and her father’s spine-tingling campfire stories that brought the past to life. But it was her older sister’s home — an historic dwelling dating back to 1814 — that truly opened Raven’s eyes to the world beyond the veil. Living alongside restless spirits, including one particularly dramatic poltergeist, became as natural as morning coffee.
These early encounters sparked a lifelong fascination with the deeper mysteries behind supernatural phenomena. Raven discovered her true calling: helping tormented souls find the peace they’ve been seeking for decades, sometimes centuries, by uncovering the truth behind their tragic stories.
Raven masterfully weaves together historical mysteries, paranormal encounters, and small-town secrets in her atmospheric novels. Her Bitterport Mystery Series, set in the hauntingly beautiful but abandoned Tasmanian town of Bitterport, will captivate readers worldwide with a perfect blend of ghostly intrigue, buried secrets, and heartwarming romance.
Drawing from her background in professional editing and publishing, Raven crafts emotionally engaging stories where every creaking floorboard and mysterious apparition serves the larger purpose of justice and redemption. Her paranormal mysteries are for readers who appreciate stories where the supernatural meets the deeply human.
When she’s not communing with spirits or researching historical mysteries, Raven travels extensively, seeking inspiration in the world’s forgotten corners. She shares her adventures with her partner who has learned to pack sage and salt alongside the usual travel essentials.
Raven believes that every ghost has a story worth telling, and every mystery deserves to be solved — preferably with a happy ending for both the living and the dead.
“I don’t write horror stories. I write healing stories that happen to involve ghosts.” — Raven Corbin
Find Raven at: raven-corbin.com
