The author will be stopping off at Carinya at 9am to give students encouragement to follow their passion.

"We've all got something to share, something special, and I just want to ask them 'What's your story?' and have them think about it," Blackmore said.

"When you're a kid, you look at other people for inspiration and you just need someone to say, 'I believe in you, so believe in yourself'."

Read also:

Blackmore is visiting numerous Aussie towns with her book, a rural romantic comedy, and will be stopping at Gunnedah as it "was one of the first rural towns" the author visited with her husband.

"I'm taking my stories to the rural towns and people, because so often it's the country which is taken for granted, the rural towns that miss out," Blackmore said. "But my stories are about them and for them, so we steer the van west and take the road out."

Blackmore is also drafting a new rural drama novel based in Gunnedah, which "touches on the plight of pastures [and] the fight of farmers" and will be titled Bloodwood.

The book is about a sheep-farming family battling the drought, and the obstacles they must overcome.

"I have seen wombats weave across roads, searching for water like drunken men; kangaroos whittled away to bone, staunch as fenceposts until the drought makes wages with them, too," Blackmore told the NVI.

"I express my heartbreak in the only way I know how - through the pen."

When asked how she finds her inspiration, the author said she writes as she feels, "without any framework".

"It's kind of like walking ahead in faith when all you can see is a flickering light ahead. That's what you move towards, with only determination, and skill with the pen," she said. "I'm moved by the landscape, trees, houses with a history. They speak. I listen."

DJ Blackmore will visit Carinya Christian School Gunnedah at 9am on Friday, May 24. She will also visit Gunnedah Shire Library from 10-11am; this event is free to attend and morning tea will be provided.

Subscribe to receive all of your local news.