Ever Wanted to Write a Romance Novel?

If you'd like to know more about Writing Romance check out my 7-week online course at the Professional Writing Academy - which kicks off again on 24th February!

Happy New Year and a Happy New Look for Mills and Boon!

So I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and you're all settling in for some equally fab New Year celebrations... Or if you're in Oz you're already hunkering down to work off that hangover!

I had a busy and exciting year in 2017 writing-wise. Managing to publish my first classic Presents, Vows They Can't Escape, in Feb was a major milestone for me. In March I joined up with wonderful authors Kaylie Newell, Kate Hardy, Patricia W Fischer and Jeannie Moon to write the Men of Marietta series for Tule - which kicked off with my book Tempting the Deputy! And then in July I had the digital release of my second longer women's fiction book for HQ Stories, Summer at Willow Tree Farm. In September my second classic Presents, The Virgin's Shock Baby was out and then in October and November, I enjoyed tutoring Writing Romance, my seven-week online course for The Professional Writing Academy, for a new group of writers. With all that going on I'm actually kind of amazed that I managed to finish two more books for Presents - one is due out next April - Captive at Her Enemy's Command is the sequel to The Virgin's Shock Baby - and I've just finished revisions on the second which is scheduled for release in September. I'm still waiting to hear back from my poor over-worked editor on my Nano-Sheikh story which I completed during NaNoWriMo! Needless to say I have big plans for 2018, to hopefully write at least three more Presents, another book for Tule (a rodeo cowboy this time!!) and I'm exploring ideas for several longer women's fiction books I want to write.... And we're also doing another run of Writing Romance kicking off on February 5th, so if you've ever wanted to write romance yourself, or are already a romance writer who is struggling to get your writing to the next level and want seven intensive weeks of writing and learning with a group of other like-minded authors and tuition and feedback from a USA Today bestselling author, then start the new year right and sign up....

Wow! I'm exhausting myself just thinking about all that. But that's the way it should be, having new projects to look forward to is always the best place to be if you're a writer.

But enough about me! Also in the new year is the long awaited Mills and Boon Makeover in the UK... Mills and Boon authors learned all about the new look for our books in September at a top secret meeting after our annual author lunch. I'm not gonna lie, I LOVE the new look. Clean, cool, and fiercely contemporary, the new cover design says everything that needs to be said about Mills and Boon in the 21st century – that while it may be a heritage brand with a long history that authors and editors alike are justifiably proud of for supplying readers with that shot of escapism from their every day lives – there's nothing old school about the content of these little books with a big heart! We write smart, sexy, fiercely contemporary stories for today's readers, so I'm super excited that the look of the books will now reflect that. I hope it will attract a whole new readership to our stories who've never realised before now how much they are gonna love these stories!! Because seriously, what's not to love about reading stories where women (and men) get what they want and, perhaps more importantly, what they need out of positive, empowering relationships? Life can be hard in today's world where everything seems to move so far, so fast, and it sometimes feels like there's not nearly enough compassion, enough empathy, enough kindness (especially on Twitter!). So why not take a break from all that real-life angst and enjoy watching two other people work out their problems knowing they are guaranteed to get their happy ever after (if they work hard enough for it) and you don't have to lift a finger!! Do feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.

I'm so excited about the Mills and Boon makeover I'm putting my money - or rather one of my author copies - where my mouth is and giving away a copy of my first new look book on Goodreads. Call Me Cupid is a By Request 3-in-1 featuring stories by me, the lovely Fiona Harper and the lovely Nina Harrington.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Call Me Cupid

by Heidi Rice

Giveaway ends January 05, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Good luck to everyone who enters.... And whatever happens have a wonderful 2018! Full of love, light and great reading.

How I Succeeded at #NaNoWriMo2017 in 10 Super-Smug Top Tips!

Before I begin this blog about my startling NaNoWriMo journey this year... I give fair warning to anyone who is still doing it and has only hit 10k (which was me a few years back!) they may want to step away from this blog, unless of course you think my uber smug ramblings will inspire you.

Proof of my Awesomeness...

So, a little context. For the last four years I have done NaNoWriMo... In non-writer speak that's National Novel Writing Month, in which people all over the world attempt to write a 50k novel in a month during the month of November with the help of NaNoWriMo's handy website. To be fair, this fabulous, inclusive, supportive, writerly endeavour is really aimed at people doing a full time job, as opposed to writers like me whose full-time job is actually writing. So I already had a head start. I have all day to write, I don't have to take my laptop to work and squeeze in word count during my lunch break or after work on the train home or whatever.

But even with this huge boon, I have still managed to struggle to write a whole book in that space of time. There are a number of reasons for this.. Sometimes life gets in the way even if you're a writer, sometimes you have to stop to do revisions on another book, sometimes it's just too exhausting - writing all day, every day for thirty days is a marathon whatever way you look at it. But perhaps the most frequent reason I fail at NaNo is.. THE DARN BOOK JUST ISN'T WORKING!! And half way through the month I falter and fall flat on my face (I so need a gif here of a writer faceplanting on their keyboard). When I am simply no longer able to add word count to a heaving pile of poop that I know is going nowhere. And let's face it, that can happen to anyone. The NaNo theory is you just keep writing and polish the turd later into a glorious gleaming golden book and very, VERY occasionally I can do that, but most of the time I can't because I find myself putting words into my characters mouths or thoughts into their heads and I don't know where the heck they are coming from and as a result my story makes no sense, my characters become cardboard cutouts saying what I want them to say, not what they should be saying... And well, you get the picture, continuing to write when that happens is a complete waste of my time. I have to go back and fix it...

That basically happened the first two times I did NaNo. And after crashing out at around 10k the first time and 17k the next I felt pretty despondent, I'm not gonna lie. But then last year, I got a lucky break. I'd been working on this particular book for months already and had the Heidi Face Plant Effect with it, so I decided to scrap it and start re-writing it from scratch on 1st November with NaNo to spur me on.... I raced through that 50k book, I used a few scenes from the previous attempts but at least 45k of it was new writing, and declared myself a winner. Because strictly speaking I was. But I knew I'd had a bit of help, because I'd tried and failed so many times with these two characters and this story already, I knew them inside and out by the time I sat down to write that story... The result was a book called The Virgin's Shock Baby which I ended up loving, the words just flowed during that November, and although I did have to do some revisions on it (because I have yet to manage to write a book which does not require them!) the main bones of the story, the characters and their conflicts, all the key scenes were there. Which is pretty impressive and pretty huge IMHO... *Heidi pats self on the back here* (see what I meant about smug?)

Now as luck would have it, The Virgin's Shock Baby came out this October, so while I was doing publicity for it and I got to thinking at the beginning of October...

Can I do that again? But from actual ground zero this time. Can I repeat that remarkable, uplifting writing experience, with a book that I hadn't even written a synopsis for? Let alone any words? Now at this point, and one of the other reasons why I was considering doing NaNo again was that several things aligned...

Top Tip 1: Incentivise Yourself: 

At the end of October I had just handed in another book and was waiting to hear back from my editor on it. I had one book to submit left on my current contract which had actually been due at the end of October, but which I was already late with because the first book in this particular 3-book contract had nearly killed me, took a tortuous six months to write and pushed all my deadlines back several months... So if I could get this next book out in a month it would make up for that nightmare book's messing with my writing schedule. It'd still be a month late, but it would put me right back on track. So I had a lot of incentive - money-wise - to commit to NaNo!

Top Tip 2: Brainstorm/Plot Something, Anything, Before You Start

Inspiration - Texas-style

Just to be clear I am a pantser... I don't as a rule plot. But you do need some semblance of an idea before you start.. For me I got round to this as a result of another fortuitous thing that happened in October... I went on a ten-day road trip to Texas with my best mate right at the beginning of the month. We do this every couple of years, because we love each other and we love discovering and re-discovering the hidden corners of the US (we met while doing a Comparative American Studies degree at Warwick, nuf said!) and it's a great way to enjoy just being ourselves - as well as mums, and wives, and workers, etc. (There is a reason why one of our favourite movies is Thelma and Louise - although we always leave out the driving off a cliff bit!) Anyhow, this year we ended up doing a five hour drive one day through the Big Bend then along the border country on I-90 from Marfa to Fort Clark Springs... The desert landscape was rich and evocative and during the drive I brainstormed an idea for my first Sheikh book with my best mate. I'd had an unformed idea mulling about in my head for a book in which the heroine was a ghost writer who was commissioned by the hero... That was it, that was all I had. Now, my best mate is not a writer, or a romance reader but as we chatted about my characters, their backstories, what their motivations were, we refined the story, discovering some of the key themes, the plot points, etc and ended up with a much better semblance of an idea for this book with her playing Devil's Advocate. For example, I'd discovered my hero was a royal personage of some description who wanted my heroine to write a hagiography of his dead father - the former ruler of a secretive oil-rich kingdom. In reality his father was a despot, but the hero wanted to hide this as he brought democracy to his kingdom, but he hadn't counted on my heroine's thirst for truth and knowledge or the insane sexual chemistry that they shared, etc, etc.. These were just a few of the things we discovered about the story

Brainstorming is Us

during our drive...  Which just goes to show folks, if you don't already know this, as a writer you can work anywhere, even when you're driving a car... Unfortunately we got a bit too into our brainstorming at one point and ended up getting pulled over for speeding! At that point, as we sat in the car watching the highway cop saunter towards us with his gun on his hip things got a bit too Thelma and Lou... But luckily the officer who stopped us was an absolute sweetheart and only gave us a caution (he is so ending up in a book one day!)... Anyway, the caution and the 'crapping ourselves' moment was worth it, because when I got back to the UK, I had enough of an idea for this book to slap up a synopsis on my NaNoWriMo page in late October. BTW that synopsis is nothing like the finished book, but it committed me to the process and, perhaps even better, I had a clear idea for an opening scene!

Top Tip 3: Have a Clue for Your First Scene

That first scene is pretty important when you kick off with NaNo on November 1st, because with only 30 days to write your story you have to hit the ground running... If you spend hours, or even waste your first day, trying to figure out what you're going to write for that first scene, you are screwed, because you will already be waging an uphill battle by Day 2, which is going to make it that much harder to incentivise yourself... That said, your first scene doesn't HAVE to be the opening scene for your novel like mine was - that may change during the course of the month anyway... I will cover the non-linear approach to NaNo in Top Tip 5... But before that in my personal NaNo journey this year I have ...

Top Tip 4: Go Off Piste If You Have To

Although I hit the ground running with my first scene and managed to add yet more words to it by Day 2 and was feeling pretty impressed with myself... It all went a bit pear-shaped on Day 3.. Yeah... Day 3! I was flagging because I'd completed my opening scene, I liked it, or mostly liked it, but something was not working. Already. Should I charge ahead and ignore that feeling, or take the time to stop and rewrite the scene, figure out what was wrong? Because I'd been feeling chipper and excited about my great early word count the temptation here was to forge ahead. Bollox if it's not working, I WANT MORE WORDS... But then I stopped to think. And here's the great thing about NaNo, it gives you the scope to do this. Because it gives you loads of stats. You're aiming to write 1667 words per day, which actually isn't very many if you break it down (especially if you've got the luxury of the whole day to write), so if you write extra words some days, obviously you have more leeway on others - and your NaNo novel stats will tell you exactly how much leeway you've got. So here's what I decided... It was early days, I'd got ahead, why not take advantage of that and use the extra leeway to figure out what was wrong, because I knew from my process and my previous NaNos that launching into a book that wasn't really working right from the start was a recipe for disaster which I would pay for later. I didn't get back up ahead of the curve again till Day 9 but taking that break on Day 3 to correct myself meant that I was able to keep up the forward momentum... Which is pretty important in NaNo and something you need to try and do no matter what... Which leads us to...

Top Tip 5: If a Scene's Not Working, Write Another

Some times you have the luxury of going back and rewriting... Other times you might need a bit more time to percolate a particular scene in your head.. Or maybe you're just bored with the chonological order of the story and you've got this really vivid idea of a scene that comes much later which you want to write first. This happened to me a couple of times during my NaNo story. Ordinarily I wouldn't jump ahead, because I tend to panic that I'll never want to go back and finish the other scene, or the scene I want to write might never end up in the book - I'm a bit of a completest on the sly - but with NaNo you can totally use your dogged pursuit of all things word count to free up your writing that way. And for me that turned out to be liberating.  When I actually ended up incorporating my jump-ahead scenes into the story, I had to change them quite a bit, because stuff that had gone before had changed too in between the time when I wrote it and the time I got to add it on the timeline, which is why I wouldn't recommend doing this too much - I would also advise not writing in capital letters on your ms "ADD SEX SCENE IN HERE LATER" when your son is looking over your shoulder!  But it was still cool having those jump-ahead scenes ready and waiting for me to give me a crucial road map to follow as I filled in the blanks...  For this reason I would also suggest going with ...

Top Tip 6: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

I found that while I was keen to change things up occasionally (Tip 5), and I did stop and re-edit a couple of scenes that weren't working so as not to stall my forward momentum (Tip 4)... It was also invaluable not to freak out too much about the actual quality of my writing. You know, that moment while free-writing a scene when you wince and think, oh crap did her blush just go radioactive AGAIN!! ie: that moment when you realise you've already used that stock phrase about two dozen times before in the story... I'm telling you now, don't worry about that, you can fix all that when you re-read the story, figure out a more original way to describe her blush, or maybe stop having her blush like a nun every two seconds... That's all in the finesse you'll bring to the story later. NaNo isn't about finesse or fine, finished, perfectly polished prose, it's about spewing out that rough draft in a month. And rough in my case meant rough (or even radioactive!)

Top Tip 7: Manage Your Procrastination

Now, as I said before, life sometimes will get in the way. In which case you give yourself a pass... I'm not someone who can write when my kids are sick, I'm sick, my boiler just blew up, or during the myriad other things that might go unexpectedly wrong. That said, I am also someone who loves to procrastinate... Procrastination is not life getting in the way, people. It's you getting in the way of your writing. Now, that said, I also am not someone who can do NO procrastinating at all for a whole month. I would have to cut off my fingers and blow up my modem to achieve that... I love social media, I'm addicted to fricking Instagram at the minute (thank you so much to my sons for introducing me to that handy timesuck) and I also love to go on trips. With that in mind, I made sure I only agreed to one weekend away in November (more on that later in Tip 8) and I also made a concerted effort to limit my social media fiddling... I will admit that it didn't hurt at all that by the middle of the month I was so into Zane and Cat's story I was actually keen to write it, so piddling about on Facebook finding out what my spirit animal was or who I'd been in a former life (Cleopatra btw, if anyone is interested) didn't appeal as much as it usually would, but that won't always be the case. Although having said that, maybe getting into the story was actually a result of abiding by Tip 8...

Top Tip 8: Write Every Day, No Excuses

Write Everywhere & Anywhere

No excuses - except for the life getting in the way one, obviously. For me having to write every day became an issue several times during my NaNo month for a number of reasons. For starters, even though I write for a living I don't usually write on weekends (unless I'm on a screaming deadline) and I don't always write every single day, because I might have other stuff to do instead which I can convince myself is actually writing (even though it actually isn't) such as publicity for a previous book, updating my website, writing a blog. As it happens I was also tutoring my online course in Writing Romance for the Professional Writing Academy, which I love doing, so that was another thing I would happily be doing rather than writing my own story. But despite all of that, during November, I forced myself to write my story EVERY SINGLE DAY until I'd finished my book... This is another great asset of NaNo, it does push you to do this, and I have discovered, the more regularly you write, the more you get into your story and your characters, and because of that ideas start percolating, things start being revealed that only familiarity with your story and your characters can give you. I was actually waking up at night occasionally with a new idea for a scene (to be fair, that got a bit annoying, especially when I couldn't remember the idea the next day - or I did remember it and realised it was pants!). But the one day when I really really struggled to write  was during the one weekend trip I had allowed myself. This was a trip to Manchester, with my husband, who was being interviewed at a special crime writing conference at the University of Salford on the true-crime book he published in July called Hunt for the 60s Ripper. We arrived on Friday night, had a great night out in Manchester, got ever so slightly merry and didn't crash out in our room at the Premier Inn in Salford Quays until very very late... I knew I was not going to be able to write on the train home the next day (because my youngest son has kidnapped my laptop and is holding it to ransom in his uni room in Sheffield), so the only option left to me was to write in the Premier Inn the next morning while my husband headed off to the conference. I'm not gonna lie... That was hard work. Sitting in that room, somewhat hung over (more on that in Tip 10) and booting up my husband's laptop while the big cuddly bed was beckoning and I knew all sorts of cool stuff was going on in the conference. I didn't manage a huge word count that day, but I managed enough to update my word count and stay ahead of the curve... Which brings me to Tip 9.

Top Tip 9: Get Addicted to Updating Your Word Count & Other NaNo Tricks

Updating my word count obsessively definitely worked for me, incentive-wise. It was one of the things that got me sitting my butt in the chair each day, unplugging my internet and forcing myself to put words on paper, because I wanted to see where I was on the curve, wanted to get that little badge saying I'd updated my count five days in a row, or reached a particular milestone, etc. On those days when I had found it hard to write, or my procrastination management took a hit, I got into updating my word count every time I took a screen break, just to convince myselt that I had made some progress. During my normal writing life, I write in the mornings, but because of my word count update addiction, I discovered that on days when I'd been farting around too much I would have to write in the afternoon or even the evening to get those words done. The NaNo site also offers other incentives to writing. Find what works for you - maybe chatting in the community forum, or doing one of your local write ins at a coffee shop.... But whatever it is, use it. And keep updating that word count.

Top Tip 10: Keep Fit and Don't Get Pissed Too Much

View from the morning run!

This is a special tip for those of us (like moi) who do sedentary jobs and are no longer under 25 anymore. I'm not entirely sure how much this helped with my creativity and productivity - because sometimes those things can be down to other factors too, like your characters actually talking to you! - but for me I did two things this November which I think really helped. The first thing I had actually started during the summer and had nothing to do with NaNo specifically. I started running regularly. Don't get me wrong, I am not a runner, I have never been a runner but I discovered that I was rarely using my gym membership, I was turning into a lard ass, and running was the cheapest way to fix that. So in August I downloaded the brilliant NHS Couch to 5k app. If you're in the UK you can download this for free and it's a nine-week guide to starting from scratch and ending up running 5k, with lots of help from your mentor (mine is Michael Johnson, who I am now ever so slightly in love with) - but there are loads of other similar apps available to those not lucky enough to have the NHS. FYI, if I can now run for 30mins three times a week absolutely anyone can. The other thing I did health wise was I decided to stop drinking alcohol at home for the duration of November. This gave me six alcohol free nights a week instead of my usual three - so I was sleeping better, and feeling better in the morning... Of course, it also meant that when I was out and about I tended to drink too much (see Tip 8 and the Manchester debacle)... Obviously if you're not a drinker and you already walk the prescribed 10k steps a day without having to drag yourself out of bed at seven and run in the dark you're already way ahead of me... But just generally speaking, it's good to remember that writing for long periods of time is actually hard physical as well as mental activity, precisely because there's no physical activity involved. 

So there you have it, my Winning NaNoWriMo 2017 journey.... In ten super-smug Top Tips.

I sent the book wot I wrote off to my editor at Harlequin Mills & Boon yesterday, and I've yet to hear back whether she thinks it's publishable or a pile of poop (ie: I might well be feeling a little less smug shortly). But whatever happens, I will always be super proud of my NaNoWriMo 2017 Winner's Certificate. Have I mentioned that already?

Being a Romance Writing Tutor: A Q&A

If you don't already know this, I tutor on online writing course called An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance with the lovely peeps at The Professional Writing Academy... They did a Q&A with me about the first course we ran last year which I'm posting here too, because I'm clever like that!!

BTW the next course opens on 20th February if you're interested.

Enjoy...

Tutor Q&A: Heidi Rice

The first iteration of our Introduction to Writing Hot Romance course has just finished with great success. We thought we’d see what our tutor, romance author Heidi Rice, had to say about our unique approach to teaching people how to write.

Q - Hi Heidi. We love your work on the Introduction to Writing Hot Romance course, but what do you enjoy most about teaching writing with the Professional Writing Academy?

Heidi Rice - I love the time and flexibility it gives me to really nurture writers over a 7+ week long time frame. When putting the materials together for the course it allowed me to look in-depth at the different craft aspects of romance writing, and it amazed me the different skills and experiences the writers on the course brought to these disciplines.

Q - How do you find the online course differs from teaching or running workshops face to face?

HR - Honestly, I love the flexibility it gives course participants to develop their writing on their own timetable. When giving workshops face-to-face it's also hard to make contact with each individual writer to the extent I can do in this format. Similarly, when doing face-to-face workshops myself, before I became a published author, I always felt under pressure to ‘perform’ when given writing assignments. To be spontaneously brilliant is a lot of pressure, and not how the process of writing works in reality for most authors (and certainly not for me). It can take hours, days to write and then edit any piece. Sometimes the writing flows, but often it doesn’t.

Also, all the materials are accessible and available throughout the course, so you’re not having to jot down notes and listen intently - it’s all there to access and refer to at your leisure when you have the headspace to do so - while at the same time the course gives you deadlines so you can’t prevaricate or procrastinate too much (which all writers tend to do given half a chance, me included!). Sometimes, too, the anonymity of online participation can give writers more confidence about displaying their work. It’s tough putting your writing out there for others to read, especially if you’ve never done it before, and being able to have that little degree of separation can be really empowering. Not everyone is an extrovert after all, and this can be particularly true of writers!

Q - Is there anything in particular that makes Professional Writing Academy so special?

HR - I think the way in which the Professional Writing Academy’s online classroom works is one of its greatest strengths. As the tutor, I love the opportunities it gives me to give each individual writer informed feedback on their writing exercise and also look at their overall development during the course. Perhaps even more important, though, are the opportunities it gives for the writers to support and encourage each other as they learn to critique each other's work.

Writing is an extremely solitary profession in practice. The support I get from other writers in my genre whom I interact with online is invaluable to me and something that this course actively encourages, so that when writers finish the course they have the potential to continue to use and benefit from those friendships going forward.

Q - Do you think group teaching is more successful than other approaches?

HR - Definitely. Learning to edit your own work is an essential part of writing, and the very best way to do that is to first learn how to read a piece of writing like an author. Then, it’s important to learn how to improve the qualities in that writing that you believe don’t work - while also acknowledging and supporting those aspects which do. Those are all skills that critiquing the writing of your peers teaches you.

Similarly, having your work critiqued by your fellow writers gives you an invaluable insight into how an informed reader views your writing. Seeing how other writers approach the same exercise also broadens your own perspective. You may think ‘wow, I wish I’d done that’, or ‘that’s an interesting approach’, or even ‘that doesn’t work for me’, but as soon as you read that piece - because you’ve had to do the same thing yourself - you’ll instinctively be looking at what they’ve written through the eyes of a writer as well as a reader.

The beauty of the group approach, therefore, is that it means you’re not just learning from your tutor. You’re also learning from every single other writer on your course. That’s a lot of extra bang for your buck (to put it bluntly!).

Q - Do your students ever struggle with peer critiquing?

HR - Writers often lack confidence in their work, especially if they’re new writers who have never put their work out there before. They may be apprehensive about having their work criticised, or conversely criticising the work of others. I always say that it’s okay to be nervous, but to always remember the online classroom is a universally supportive and inclusive environment. The other writers want to improve their writing too, and they know exactly what you’re going through because they’re right there with you.

By the end of the course I assure them that they’ll not only have learned so much from the experience of peer critiquing, but they’ll actually be really excited about getting feedback on their work.

Q - Have any students given you feedback about your work on the course?

HR - Yes, and it was great! Learning to write - in whatever genre - is hard, and it’s a journey that never ends, so I was really pleased that the feedback I got from students on my first Introduction to Writing Hot Romance course was so positive about continuing on their own individual journeys as writers. As a tutor that’s my end goal - not just to inform writers about the skills required to become a romance author, but also to enthuse and excite them about their own potential as writers.

Q - Heidi, it’s been great seeing a tutor’s perspective of teaching on the course, and I hope you’ll have just as much fun in the future. Thanks!

HR - It’s always a pleasure! Thank you.

_______________

Heidi Rice is a USA Today bestselling author of 24 romantic novels, novellas and short stories. She has sold over 2 million copies of her books worldwide, had her stories translated into 23 languages and has finaled three times in the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA awards which recognise excellence in romance writing. Her first women’s fiction novel, So Now You’re Back, was published in February 2016 by Harlequin Mira UK and described by one Amazon reviewer as ‘a sheer delight’.

Visit Heidi’s website, and follow her on Twitter at @HeidiRomRice

Are you a fan of romantic fiction? Would you like to try writing fresh, modern romance, or learn how to inject some sizzle and spice into your stories? Introduction to Writing Hot Romance is a new, seven-week online course that will teach you the the secrets of writing bestselling romance, help you develop ideas, create effective plots and compelling characters, and begin to critique your work.

Course opens 20 February, 2017, applications are open now.

Losing My Podcast Virginity

Me, Abby & Chantelle Shaw

So two fortuitous things happened recently:

Firstly, I was asked by the lovely peeps at the Professional Writing Academy if I would be interested in doing a podcast to help promo my new online writing course with them An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance - the course launches on October 4th so if you want to sign up and treat yourself to 7 weeks of intensive but I hope completely fabulous sessions on romance writing you still have time.

The other thing that happened was I went to an author lunch in Central London (an annual event which is always a top date in my writing calendar) with some of my favorite romance authors – which of course made me think, if I'm gonna lose my podcast virginity, I'm going to rope them in too!!

First thing to figure out was how to work my iPhone's Voice Memo app. Yup, this took a while, because it turns out my smart phone is a lot smarter than I am... But once Abby Green and I had done numerous tests, and then actually managed to find the recordings on the phone without accidentally deleting them (not as easy as it sounds), I was ready to roll.

Showing off my latest cover at the party

Next up was cornering some of my mates. First up was of course Abby, who had foolishly helped me with the app and was therefore a sitting duck for my first soundbite.

The question was a simple one, though, for someone who writes searingly sexy romances: Why do you love writing hot romance?

Then I turned to Fiona Harper - I asked her why she loved writing romance, as her books are less hot but still wonderfully fresh, funny, heartwarming romance novels for HQ.

My fellow Fairy Tales of New York author Lucy King, who had made the mistake of camping out with us after the lunch and who writes wonderfully sexy, sassy feel-good romances got hooked in next...

After the author lunch each year Mills and Boon invite all their current authors to a glamorous drinks party in the News Building - right next to the Shard with wonderful views over London – and there I managed to waylay the legendary Sharon Kendrick – author of a staggering 102 books for M&B all of them scorchingly hot and deeply emotional reads – for a quick chat.

The fabulous Ms Kendrick

The next day I made a trip to Sheffield to talk on a panel with Sue Stephens (darn it, I should have whipped out my phone out and interviewed her too!) and M&B editor Flo Nicholl about why Mills and Boon books are so cool hosted by academic Val Derbyshire during the University's Festival of the Mind event.

So it wasn't until Sunday that I had the delight of figuring out how to use Garageband to edit the sound recordings and add my own thoughts (and yes, there was sarcasm in that statement!). After a long day spent fumbling my way through the highly intuitive (but not that intuitive to me) application, I had my podcast. And I have to say, I am mighty pleased with the eventual result. The people at PWA prettied it up with some photos and stuck it on YouTube, so I need to say a big thanks to them, and to my mates, who each had insightful and interesting reasons as to why they love writing romance (hot or not).

I'd love to know what you think? So here it is...

Now I am no longer a podcast virgin, I may be doing more podcasts - I love to talk about romance, so why not share the joy, right? In fact, the PWA may have created a monster...

If You Can Do, Teach!

Sure we've all heard that old adage - if you can't do, teach. Say what now? Are you nuts!

Not only is that remark an extremely derogatory thing to say about one of life's most essential jobs... After all, along with being a doctor, I can't think of a more important profession than teaching  (on present evidence in the UK, it certainly isn't being a politician!)... But I've also discovered that silly little adage simply is not true. I should know, because I've just spent the past month devising an online course to teach new, newish or new to this genre writers how to do something I've been doing myself for the last ten years - namely writing hot romance.

With three RITA finals, a USA Today bestseller tag and 2 million copies of my books sold worldwide, I think I can comprehensively say I know how to write a romance novel. Well, except when I get a six-page revision letter from my editor, then I usually have several moments when I am absolutely convinced every one of those achievements was a total and utter fluke. But panic attacks aside, the stats speak for themselves, I genuinely love what I do and I'm good at it. I thrive on creating multi-layered, emotionally complex characters. I adore hypothesising about their kinetic first meeting until I've found the perfect opening hook to kick their romance off right. I get giddy figuring out the twists and turns in their story until I've plotted a course to their Happy Ever After (or Happy For Now) packed with humour, insight, conflict and emotional integrity. I get goosebumps while crafting the parry and thrust of great dialogue, loaded with subtext to ramp up the tension. And writing sex scenes that excite and challenge my characters both physically and emotionally? Hell, yeah, bring it on.

And I absolutely adore talking about that process to anyone who will listen, so I've done numerous library workshops and blogs to analysis and interpret all the different aspects of how to write – and how not to write – a great romance story with lashings of heat.

So when the Professional Writing Academy approached me to tutor an online course titled An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance I was all for it. This would be fun, challenging, it would improve my own understanding of the dynamics of romance writing, while also helping others to begin to discover all the elements involved. An insight into the secrets I've learned over the last ten years, but also the chance to discuss with other writers how they develop their characters, their voice, their craft in the PWA's innovative online classroom. I couldn't wait to jump in and get started.

That said, until I started working with the PWA's brilliant creative writing experts on  my session documents, devising reading and thinking exercises using extracts from some of the top authors in romance's many varied subgenres, figuring out how all the different elements I love could be taught in a supportive and  informative way, using examples of my own writing (including the stuff that ending up on the cutting room floor), I had no idea exactly how much work would be involved... Or exactly how genuinely fascinating it would be to put this course together. Having said that, I have also discovered, while making videos for the course on the different session topics, exactly how hard it is not to look like a demented robot who doesn't have a clue what she's waffling on about when you have your son who is an actor and filmmaker pointing his video camera at you... The video inserts are still a work in progress after an aborted session last weekend, when having fluffed my lines about 30 times, he pointed out (very patiently)  that if I wanted to not look like a rabbit in the headlights every time he turned on the camera, I needed to learn my lines before we started filming. Oops.

But here's one we made earlier!



Anyway, once I've finally aced all the videos, we've still got tweaks to do and then runthroughs etc before we launch on the 4th October and I can start working with a bunch of new writers at which point I expect this process to get even more challenging and exciting.

But don't ever tell me those who can't do, teach... Or frankly, you'll get a slap. Because getting stuck into my current book again - and the six page revision letter that just landed on my desk from my editor (sheesh, cue panic attack) - after a month off to work on this course, feels positively pedestrian in comparison!

If you're interested in learning more or signing up for An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance you can check out the details here.

The London Book Fair... And An Exciting Announcement

Fiona and Heidi go mad at #LBF16

When my very good writing mate and fellow Harlequin author Fiona Harper suggested heading to the London Book Fair I have to admit I was unsure... Wasn't this an event strictly for publishers and agents? Apparently not, as I discovered when Fi and I crashed the event this Tuesday.

Have to admit, if I had done this as an unpublished author I would have been totally intimidated, in fact even as a multi-published author I was a bit intimidated (oh, okay, a lot intimidated). Based in Kensington Olympia's imposing Victorian halls, the event is HUGE, with stands representing pretty much every publisher you've ever heard of vying for space on the ground floor and mezzanine level. After a shot of much needed coffee, Fiona and I headed for Author HQ (Fiona having downloaded the app and knowing how to use it!). This is a fairly new addition to the fair but is the perfect base for authors attending the event., providing career-orientated seminars in a cordoned off area tucked away behind the Children's Publishers section.

We nabbed a ringside seat for the first talk of the day... An Introduction to Publishing with agent Piers Blofeld of Shiel Land Associates and Macmillan Adult Books publisher Jeremy Trevathan... Which turned out to be illuminating. I have an agent and a publisher and even I was astonished at how little I knew not just about the relationship between the two, but also how massive this industry actually is... I particularly liked Piers advice to authors thinking of sidelining their agent to go straight to the source! 'Don't get a dog and bark yourself'.

Dinosaurs anyone??

The next seminar was equally riveting but for different reasons: The Independent Authors Journey featured a panel of three top indie authors – Mark Dawson, Mel Sherratt and Keith Houghton – who each gave us an insight into how they became successful indie-published authors after a disappointing response from the traditional publishing industry to their work... I've always shied away from the prospect of indie publishing on the grounds that I know nothing about marketing or PR and have no real interest in it. How wrong was I, these three made the whole indie publishing route seem both accessible and exciting. The top benefits, apart from getting a larger share of the profits obviously, included the control they have over their own careers and the interaction they get with readers. I love interaction with readers so this totally intrigued me. I also liked Dawson's assertion that the writing still comes first but he finds the business side a good counterpoint to the writing... And a lot of what they do, traditionally published authors are also required to do in terms of social media, etc. I wish I'd had a chance to pop over to the Independent Authors Stand afterwards. While I'm still happy where I am, it's nice to know that the other options out there aren't as scary as you thought and I was hugely impressed with these three whose drive and ambition and talent was massively inspiring.

Jennifer, Tory and the
Super Fab Marian Keyes

Fiona and I were also impressed with the seminar given by Jennifer Krebs, marketing campaign manager for our own publisher Harlequin, and Tory Lyne Pirkis of Midas PR, about successful PR and marketing strategies... Again this was ostensibly for authors thinking of going it alone, but it had a lot of good advice for traditional and hybrid authors. Who knew that Nora Roberts had spent ten percent of her advance money on marketing her books to complement her publisher's input in the early stages of her career, for example... Made me realize I've been pretty naive about the business side of my own career... And there was a lovely intro from the fabulous Marian Keyes – the Author of the Day – who we'd listened to earlier chatting about her career, make-up obsessions, Mammy Keyes's storytelling abilities and a lot more besides...

My favorite quote of the day definitely came from Keyes: "Be honest, be authentic, work hard." A brilliant writer and a pretty sensational woman too IMHO!

Now for my exciting announcement....  Drum roll, pur-lease!

During the lunch break I met three wonderful women – Christina Bunce, Susannah Marriott and Helen Shipman – who are the founders and directors of The Professional Writing Academy – an innovative online platform dedicated to delivering top-notch creative writing courses, and who have even developed their own bespoke online classroom specifically for writers. After a fabulous meeting, I'm super excited to announce that I'm going to be working with them to develop an online course entitled An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance this Autumn... Hopefully with a view to doing longer more in-depth courses in the future... After nearly ten years as a published romance author, with 24 books under my belt, several major award nominations and a USA Today Bestseller tag, I feel I've got the expertise to give new writers the tools they need to help and support them on this fabulous journey...  And joining forces with experts in the field of teaching online creative writing courses will make it an amazing experience for all concerned (me included!).. So watch this space if you're an aspiring romance writer ... More details to come.

Marian Keyes: Author of the Day.. Any Day Frankly
Bringing wit, wisdom and wonderful nails to #LBF16!