WANT TO WRITE FOR HARLEQUIN ROMANCE?

Exciting opportunity at Harlequin - the Romance line is, right this minute, fast-tracking submission for whole month!

This is the skinny: -

"...we’ll be launching a fast track submission period! Anyone who sends us their first chapter and synopsis between 14th March and 23rd April will hear back from us less than ONE MONTH after the closing date, before the 18th May.

"The email address to send your submission to is romancefasttrack@hqnuk.co.uk. 

"Please attach your first chapter and short synopsis to the email as well as a short query letter, letting us know how much of the manuscript is complete. Please note, we’ll be looking at only one submission per person."

For more about the Romance line, and what the editors are looking for, click here

To discover the wide range of stories the Romance series covers - everything from fun, flirty, sizzle to heart rending emotion, set in exotic locations, great cities and the small town very like the one where you grew up, you can't do better than read the books.

This is a fabulous chance to get your proposal looked at - don't miss it!

WINNERS!

WE HAVE WINNERS! 

Kate, Anne and I have drawn the winners of the Here Come the Grooms contest and they are: -

Colleen Conklin

Natalija Shkomare

Carol Woodruff

They will all be receiving copies of the following three books -

The Devil and Miss Jones by Kate Walker
Savas's Wildcat - By Anne McAllister
Flirting with Italian - By  Liz Fielding


Flirting With Italian has just received a terrific review from the fabulous Romance Junkies -


FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN is a beautifully rendered tale of love and deception. Ms. Fielding does a fantastic job of accurately portraying a scorned woman named Sarah Gratton who escapes her old life and seeks out a new one in Italy with a slight hope of finding love along the way. Enter a hot, sexy Italian named Matteo di Serrone who just happens to live in the same house as the lady from Sarah’s great-grandpa’s war story. Ms. Fielding deftly weaves many unexpected surprises to the plot of the story, which left me wondering what would happen next. Plus, the author’s wonderful depictions of the lush countryside makes me long to take a trip into Italy. FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN is a smart, sexy, smoldering love story that oozes with seduction. Maybe a little frisky but, oh, so refreshing!

Feet and inches...

Aaargh!

I am so frustrated. Today I was writing a scene with my heroine with head in a freezer, skirt up to her knickers, and discovering, too late, that she’s being observed by some bloke she’s never met.

How do I describe the length of her skirt? My natural inclination is to describe it as six inches above her knee, but then I went to school before decimalisation. No British woman under the age of 35 would say that. Or think it. My daughter, who falls within that category, doesn’t “get” inches, feet or yards. She thinks in metres as would my heroine.

But a large part of my audience is in America, where metres are some meaningless foreign concept and I might as well be writing in French. Well, obviously, metres are … French.

I come up against this again and again. Inches v centimetres. Metres v yards. And trying to make it work for all my readers. Mostly, I find a way of writing round it, but sometimes 

I Just Want To Bang My Head Against My Desk!

COVER GIRL!

This is the first - and almost certainly the last - time I have ever been a cover girl! Thank you RNA. :)

Thanks to the best beloved for making me look so good!

Six Sentence Sunday

For this week's SSS - for more details about that see here - I've taken this little snip from the second book of my BEAUMONT BRIDES trilogy, WILD LADY.

When I wrote WILD JUSTICE, I had no notion of writing a trilogy but when my editor read it she said, "Three girls, three books and can I have the first chapter of the second one this week so that I can use it as a teaser in the back of the first book."

Of course. No problem...

Gulp.

I have to tell you, that if I'd known I'd be writing Claudia's story, I'd have made her nicer, which really would have been a shame!

This one has a "heroine in peril" plot, and a self-appointed bodyguard.

Claudia, who could usually reduce a man to stuttering incoherence in less time than it took to say it, was seriously shaken to discover that this man was quite immune to her particular brand of magic. 
     Insurance? 
     That was all that bothered him? He wasn't in the least concerned about her health, the fact that she might have broken her neck? Apparently not. As their eyes met across the wreck of her car she received the very strong impression that he was quite prepared to break it himself. Well, the day was still young and if her anonymous correspondent was right, he might yet get his wish; the thought was enough to drive the smile right off her face.


Actually there are seven sentences, but one of them is only one word and that's allowed.

KATE WALKER

I’m reading one of Kate Walker’s wonderful Harlequin Mills & Boon Modern romances at the moment.  The Konstantos Marriage Demand had somehow slipped behind my teetering tbr pile and, as always, it delivers on her emotional, sexually charged promise.

But I’m not talking about Kate Walker the romance author today, but Kate Walker who has done so much to teach new writers about the craft of writing a page turning romance.

Her impromptu, generous masterclass posts on the art and craft of writing at the eHarlequin community have won her an enormous following. Her workshops at conferences, at Caerleon and Fishguard are sell out occasions. But you don’t have to travel to Wales to get the benefit of her wisdom and experience.

Her fabulous book, Kate Walker’s Kate Walker's 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance, has just made it into its third edition and I have a copy, hot off the press, to give away to one lucky visitor to my blog this week.

The 12 Point Guide is packed with the essentials that every writer needs.

• How to write emotion
• Why dialogue is the lifeblood of your novel
• Sensuality
• Discovering the vulnerability of your hero
• Pace
• Digging down to the vital “black” moment
• Creating the essential PTQ – page turning quality

Since this a book for writers, for a chance to win the copy sitting on my desk I’m asking you to share a quote from your own writing – maximum 100 words! This isn’t a writing contest – I’m not judging, the winner will be drawn from a hat — but it never hurts to get your work read.

And I’ll add a copy of Mistletoe & the Lost Stiletto to the prize – or another book from my backlist if you’ve already read that one.

Off you go!

“Liz is the biz!” It has to be true, Anna Campbell said so.